Hulu Blocks Access to Internet-to-TV Software

If you thought direct-to-TV Internet video distribution wasn’t a major concern for media companies — and their cable affiliates — note this: Hulu, the joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp., announced yesterday that it will block users of Boxee, an application that allows users to watch video delivered via the Internet on their TVs, from accessing its trove of TV shows and movies.

The reason, according to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s blog post: “Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes.”

Boxee founder Avner Ronen has his own blog entry on the Hulu issue, claiming Boxee users generated 100,000 streams in one week and vowing to “work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”

Kilar doesn’t explain why the “content providers” objected.

But recall the New Year’s Eve catfight between Time Warner Cable and Viacom over carriage fees. The MSO complained publicly that Viacom generates ad revenue from its Web content that is not factored into the equation. “We don’t think that’s fair,” a TWC spokesman said at the time. “They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too online, where anybody can get it for free.” Viacom also threatened to block Time Warner Cable broadband users from accessing its shows online.

Boxee must have drawn a red flag from cable and satellite TV providers, who would have pressured the programmers, because the software makes it very, very easy to access all kinds of video-on-demand from the Internet — thereby discouraging the need to pay for TV. A backhanded compliment to Boxee, to be sure.

Now, is the genie out of the bottle, or can pay-TV providers continue to act as gatekeepers?

Note that cable operators are interested in co-opting the idea of an Internet TV set-top: Attendees of CableLabs’ winter forum this month honored just such a device, from Verismo Networks, as “the best idea” likely to succeed in cable.

Entertainment-technology blogger Dave Zatz’s take on Hulu pulling content from Boxee: “It’s just more of the same old school, short-sighted thinking that crippled the record labels. Good luck with that.”