hulu.com's advertising is weird

I'm in the middle of watching through a couple episodes of House I've not seen on hulu.com. For the shamefully uninformed, Hulu is a joint venture by Fox and NBC to attempt to prevent Apple from utterly dominating the online video market in the same way it dominates the 0nline music market. So, both networks have put a vast store of television and movies up online at, again, hulu.com, where you can go watch on-demand HD streaming video content for free(!). The thing they fail to realize, at least superficially, is that as long as the experience of watching streaming content fails to parallel or exceed that of watching the same content off physical media or in an HD television broadcast, we, the consumers will continue to demand that our video entertainments be commodified rather than, erm, servicized (yes I realize this isn't a word. What the fuck do you want, I'm pausing House to write this) Don't show me a choppy, 300x540 video and tell me you're streaming real-time HD content. FUCK YOU.

House is a perfect example of why FUCK YOU as well. Its a good show, but inherently episodic and some of the episodes are not gripping enough to justify repeated viewings which in turn makes me very, very unlikely to buy it on DVD. But I'd certainly like to have that episode where Hallucination Cuddy gives House a strip-tease while helping him with a diagnosis. But I can't, because Fox thinks that somehow letting Apple sell me that individual episode in downloadable HD video will somehow eat into their profit margin. Well, fuckers, why are you not offering such a product yourselves?

This is why I said they at least superficially fail to realize that when it comes down to it we will continue to demand video entertainments as a commodity rather than as a service. Hulu is not competing with downloads or DVD set sales, it is supplementing broadcast as advertising for the DVDs. That's why there's only one season of House available, so people like me watch the episode they want to watch, then, shit, what the hell, another. And my, wasn't that episode also very enjoyable, perhaps I will go buy the DVDs after all.

Well, guess what, Hulu? I'm not buying it. Tough. No matter how tempted I am by the ability to go and watch the first season of Babylon 5 or The A-Team I will not be buying the DVDs. Sorry. Still, you get to recoup some of your 'losses' or whatever it is we're currently calling profiting less than you'd hoped, by plying me with *the same* fucking ad for His and Hers lube. Couldn't there be a few non-lube related ads? Please? First of all I'm a fan of House, and am therefore scientifically minded enough that the idea of lube which does something "special" when combined with its companion lube conjures up images not of sexiness, but of epoxy. Two complementary gels, mixed, Science! Well, not anywhere near my man-parts thank you very much. Second of all, I already have the lube front covered and you'd be better off with the one about the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with the sexy music and wrapper slowly magically being peeled off. Its the perfect mix of food-porn, actual porn and satire of both food and actual porn. Full marks all around.

Tags: rants