Hulu Desktop: The Day Terrestrial Television Died

A few weeks back we posted on developments at Disney and Hulu, and how that spelled the end of television as we know it.  But seriously this time, it’s really over.

I remember seeing the incredible documentary The Day the Music Died where my good friend Justin Goldberg was discussing the first time he was shown Napster, typed in the name a Grateful Dead track, and realized the music industry would never be the same.  Even though the writing has been on the wall for some time now, and we’ve already been screaming from the mountaintop about it, I feel kind of like that today after 5 minutes of Hulu Desktop.

Hulu has been making huge strides for some time in terms of changing user behavior patterns for the television industry.  Still, there has clearly been a sense of detachment and frankly inferiority in the process of navigating through a browser to a lower grade stream of shows that most folks would rather view on their television sets. Hulu Desktop really changes that.  Users retain the same control over what they watch and when they watch it, but are now able to do some from a beautiful desktop interface with a much clearer picture than ever before. This creates a simple yet extraordinarily powerful formula:

Computer = Television (now)

I, as well as a couple of other members of the bigMETHOD team, abandoned cable TV years ago in lieu of DVDs and an unhealthy YouTube addiction.  Very frustrating no doubt for the cable providers that incessantly call and ask if we’d like to add basic cable to our respective internet packages. We’re clearly the exception and not the rule at this point, but I’m confident that Hulu Desktop and similar developments to come will change that in a hurry. Already I’ve started to hear friends and colleagues (that denied there would be a shift for years) mention that they’re dropping their terrestrial television packages.

The one elephant sitting in the room and standing in the way is live sports.  Hulu will not bring you the thrill of Lebron James buzzer-beaters just yet, and this will keep a large majority of the population from shifting away from TV as long as that’s the case.  However, that will only be a matter of time in itself.  I’ve been enjoying America’s past-time on Mlb.tv for years.  For a while it was touch and go - low quality feeds that consistently froze.  This year it all changed. Mlb.tv now provides Hi-def footage of every major league baseball game in the country for one season-long fee of $120.  The picture is crystal clear, you’re offered feeds of either the home or away team’s video and announcers, and you can even do 4 games at a time on split screen.

I could opine all day about how amazing both of these services are and how they add up to a paradigm shift in television viewership.  But check them out yourself, and witness the future of being a couch anywhere-you-want potato:

http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp