News: Boxee Loses Hulu

If you’re a Boxee user who hacked your AppleTV, or even just downloaded the Mac app, you’re likely in an angry mob outside production studios with torches and pitch forks right about now. A few weeks ago Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, wrote on the company blog that content providers have asked that Hulu be pulled from the Boxee software. Hulu had been a major reason people adopted Boxee.

For those of you know don’t know of Boxee, it’s free media center software compatible with OS X, Ubuntu Linux, and (with a hack) the AppleTV. Boxee pulls music, photos TV shows, and movies from your own hard drive, as well as a number of streaming web services. Boxee works a lot like Front Row or the AppleTV, but with significantly extended functionality. Boxee has the ability to stream video from providers like CBS, CNN, YouTube, MTV, Netflix, Comedy Central, The WB, myspacetv, and up until recently Hulu.

The Hulu streaming implemented by Boxee was actually quite clever. Boxee was able to embed Hulu videos into their software while still keeping the Hulu advertisements in place. This seemed like a win-win for Hulu and Boxee users. Users who were tired of having to sit in front of their computer to watch Hulu content could now enjoy it on their HDTV through their AppleTV. Hulu gained hundreds of thousands of streams from Boxee users, and their ads were still played.

According to the blog post Hulu’s content providers asked Hulu to pull the Boxee streaming. This seems like yet again another short-sighted decision by the entertainment industry. What they don’t seem to realize is that users who are savvy enough to hack their AppleTV with Boxee will be able to hook up their laptop or MacMini to their HDTV without breaking a sweat. Hulu is arguably the largest legal TV streaming site on the web. With content from FOX, NBC, Sci-Fi, FX, The WB and much more, this is only going to hurt the entertainment industry. Hulu is one of the most popular ways to stream TV shows legally on the web. When content providers continue to remove and restrict legal ways to access content on the web, many users turn to illegal methods of getting content.

To add to a fantastic week for Boxee users, Apple released an update to the AppleTV that broke the Boxee hack (and seemingly added no additional functionality). As if Boxee wasn’t having a rough enough time, Hulu has yet again blocked the Boxee users from getting at their videos. Hulu has blocked the Boxee browser from calling the public RSS feeds. As pointed out by Boxee CEO Avner Ronan on the company blog Boxee’s browser “…is no different in how it accesses this content than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Opera or any of the other browsers out there.”

Media companies generally don’t fight so hard to keep users from using their service, it’s unfortunate that Hulu didn’t advocate for themselves a little bit more in meetings with their content providers.

For Boxee users worried about the fate of one of the applications most touted features: easy web video streaming shouldn’t worry. Ronan adds this note to users in his post:

To our users: if you choose to use boxee as your media browser to view legal and publicly available content on the internet, we will do everything we can to ensure that you can access it, no matter what the source.

If you’re a Boxee user having a rough few weeks from this Hulu ordeal you can comment on Hulu’s blog here.