Hulu Now With More Choice (In Commercials Not Shows)

Posted on 18 July 2009 by


Hulu - Warehouse 13_ Resonance - Watch the full episode now.-2

There’s little question the future of television is on the net. Hulu, among others, is making series inroads through increased content and new desktop players.

What remains unclear is what exactly net-tv’s business model will be. Will it be the traditional model that relies on commercial breaks? Will it be a subscription model as some have suggested? Or will it be something new like the trial model showing up on Hulu recently?

Hulu - Warehouse 13_ Resonance - Watch the full episode now.-1-1

When I went to watch an episode of a really bad new SyFy (yes, that is the new name of the SciFi Channel- yuck!) I was asked the following question. (My liberal translation of the above image…)

Do you want to-

A. Waste the next 1 minute and 30 seconds on this awful Cymbalta commercial and then be left alone to watch this garbage?

or

B. Do you want to have the regular series of commercials interrupting your viewing while at the same time providing a series of natural bathroom breaks?

I opted for A. and used the time to start this post.

With Twitter and Facebook on your tv and Hulu seeking a decent revenue model it will be interesting to watch how all this evolves.

This post was written by:

- who has written 2793 posts on Gear Diary.

Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him. +Dan Cohen

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  • Carly Z

    I am with you. I’d rather get the commercial out of the way early and just enjoy the program after.

  • mchinsky

    Yea, but I wish they could push the commercials based on time viewed, not an index location. If I, say want to skip to the 2nd half of a show because I caught the first half, it forces you through all the ads. You don’t always watch these things linearly.

    The ultimate worst is when sites making you watch the same clip over and over everytime you click a new video. Especially some news sites.