Is Netflix streaming video the future of subscription based TV?

Over the last few days, Hulu has pulled its streaming TV and movie content from TV.com and Boxee. The move has sparked a lot of criticism, and a lot of theories about what's actually going on. It's clear from the attitude Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is taking that this wasn't his idea. Rather, content owners seem to have requested the move. So what are they up to? Boxee and TV.com were allowing users to watch videos using the same terms as Hulu: The ads remained intact, so content owners should have been getting paid either way.

PaidContent speculates that the TV.com dispute might have been over the rights to display CBS videos on Hulu. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports today that cable companies are considering launching their own streaming video services as a value added proposition for subscribers.

Now Netflix CEO Reed Hasting is hinting that his company might launch a streaming video-only service later this year or early in 2010. Right now if you want to watch streaming videos from Netflix you need to pay at least $8.99 for a plan where the company will send you one DVD at a time using that old fashioned mail doohickey.


In other words, Hulu and Netflix and a thousand illegal BitTorrent and Flash video sites have shown that there's plenty of consumer demand for online video, even while audiences for broadcast shows seem to be diminishing. So rather than lose their core audiences, a ton of companies with some sort of relationship to TV and film are trying to launch their own services. And content owners are likely starting to realize that they can make more money if they strike separate deals with Netflix, TV.com, Boxee, and other companies, rather than allowing each company to just repackage videos from Hulu.

At first blush, I can see a lot of people getting upset at the idea that they'd have to pay Netflix, a cable company, or anyone else a fee to watch videos that are available for free at Hulu's web site. But as more and more full length streaming episodes of TV shows find their way online, it's starting to look like you really could save yourself $50 a month by cancelling your cable subscription and signing up for a service like Netflix that may (or may not) be able to ink deals with the producers of your favorite 5 or 10 TV shows.

Of course, right now most of the streaming videos available from Netflix are old movies and TV shows. So maybe if you want contemporary videos, you'll have to stick with your cable company in the hopes that it will provide on-demand web access to your favorite programs.

Or maybe the genie is already out of the bottle and it's too late for companies to insist that users should pay for subscription-based video streams and have to watch commercials in every TV show. Maybe the audience will stick with Hulu... or BitTorrent.

[via GeekTonic]

Tags: hulu, netflix, online-video, streaming-video