NBCU first announced the venture back in October of 2007, and now Hulu is finally set to launch tomorrow. For those unfamiliar, the service is a join venture between NBCU and News Corp and will offer free ad-supported TV shows and motion pictures.
The site will offer thousands of free videos from Fox, NBC, and 50 other content providers. Hulu is also in talks with Lionsgate and Warner Bros. to add more content to the Hulu library with those partnerships expected to be announced soon. Notably however, the service has not reached deals yet with CBS or ABC, two major broadcasters.
Hulu went into beta testing in October of last year and has been described as a rival to the much larger YouTube video sharing site. Besides its TV content deals the site also has video licensing deals with the NBA and NHL and will have its content also appear on AOL, MSN, Comcast, MySpace and Yahoo.
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Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) Studios will reportedly provide full-length feature files and TV content on Google’s YouTube video sharing service. It was reported early last week that YouTube was preparing to add this type of content after spending months mending its relationship with Hollywood studios. On Sunday, news circulated that MGM will be the first studio (and most likely not the last) to add full-length content to the popular video site.
YouTube currently has a deal with Lionsgate, but it only stretches to short clips from films and TV shows. The deal, if the reports are accurate, signals a turning point for YouTube since it has largely been a headache for Hollywood studios since it first launched. After Google acquired YouTube, it refused to take responsibility for copyright infringing content posted by its users, citing the DMCA itself as protection.
Since then, it has made moves to remove pirated video content from its site at the convenience of the content owner. The reason for the change of heart is suspected to be Hulu, a video service already loaded with premium content that reportedly makes as much ad revenue as YouTube with only a fraction of the users. YouTube might have the numbers of users and reputation to compete, but it had to smooth over its relationship with the content companies first.
Another problematic area for YouTube was its image as a site offing web browser-locked low quality video content. YouTube has moved to provide higher quality video content and is developing video playing software that will provide clearer images. According to sources, the typical split of revenue will be 70% to the content owner and the rest of Google.
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Just one month after Comcast began imposing a bandwidth cap of 250 GB on all of its subscribers, AT&T has begun testing a cap of their own, however with a much smaller limit, 150 GB.
The cap will have tiers as well depending on how fast your connection is, slower users will only get 20 GB limit while the fastest users will get the 150 GB cap.
The test, beginning in Reno, Nevada today, will “evaluate a usage-based model that could potentially help address today’s trend of explosive bandwidth usage, [and] may be extended to one other market by the end of the year,” said AT&T.
Anyone in Reno who uses over 150 GB per month will automatically be enrolled in the full bandwidth trial at the end of the year.
Any trial participant that exceeds the limit will be given a one-month grace period but if they do it again they will be fined $1 for every GB over they go.
Unlike Comcast however, AT&T will provide all customers with a “bandwidth measuring tool” and will also notify customers when they have hit 80 percent of their limit.
“A small group of customers are using the majority of bandwidth on our network,” added AT&T. “In fact, almost 50 percent of total bandwidth is used by just five percent of customers – customers, for example, who are uploading and downloading the equivalent of more than 40,000 YouTube videos or 40 million e-mails a month. This kind of heavy usage has an impact on all of our customers.”
