Last night I had a blast messing around with the recently unveiled public beta of the Hulu Desktop client for Mac and Windows. I wonder if the unveiling of the Hulu Desktop client right before E3 was meant to line up with Sony's keynote on Tuesday. I would keep an eye out for at Sony's E3 Keynote speech on Tuesday for news of a Hulu client for PlayStation 3. I don't have any hard confirmation but all the pieces for this to happen are there and I think it is only a matter of time before they put the pieces together.
Hulu Desktop Simpsons menuHulu Desktop
Hulu.com is a major effort by TV producers to make a hyper popular unified website for streaming TV content with limited commercials. You can watch almost any episode at any time, pause, fast forward and do a whole bunch of Web 2.0-ish stuff all through streaming web video. I believe most major US TV content producers have signed up to have their content on Hulu at this point. Ironically Hulu is an official rip-off of early pirate TV on the web sites but they made a much better user friendly product that makes money for the content producers. Everyone wins.
Hulu Desktop is a stand alone tool that can run full screen and access almost all the content on Hulu but with access to remote controls. I think it is a much more elegant solution than the Web version of Hulu. This might be a sign of what a stand alone client application would work on internet enabled media device like the PlayStation 3 would look like.
A few weeks ago I met with some Sony PlayStation Network PR reps and they said to expect big announcements at E3 about PSN and how Sony is trying to position the PS3 as the source for digital media entertainment in the household. They were very proud of the fact that Hulu.com was already working on the PS3 web browser and I would generally describe their attitude as very bullish on Hulu.
Technologically all the pieces are there. Sony already has a version of the Adobe Flash player that Hulu is based on working as a part of the PS3 web browser. They have enough RAM, CPU/GPU power and access to broadband internet connections. The PlayStation Network on PS3 is not a walled garden of data like the Xbox Live Network but it can communicate to any part of the internet. Netflix Streaming is the first and only kind of external network access on Xbox Live.
Sony also has the friends in the broadcast media industry to pull this off. Sony already has a working relationship with broadcast TV and media companies through their years in Hollywood and membership in the MPAA and NAB. Sony CEO Howard Stringer has gone on record about his desire to position the PS3 as a platform for Web services.
Now Netflix on Xbox is based on a totally different set of competing technology than what Hulu uses. Hulu uses Adobe Flash that competes with the Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Media DRM than Netflix streaming. While Netflix streaming on Xbox Live requires a paid gold Xbox Live membership and a Netflix subscription the Hulu Desktop client and PlayStation Network and is completely free for the end user.
I would be surprised if Sony didn't try to bring Hulu to the PlayStation 3 with a dedicated client and this is exactly the kind of efforts that Sony and Microsoft need to look into to extend and redefine how people use their video game system hardware. If there was a big Hulu button on the PS3 I could see people who have never been into the PS3 would be interested to know they could watch thousands of TV shows on it for free. All that Sony would need to do is to announce a partnership with Hulu and to bring the Hulu client to the PS3. They have the motivation, the partnerships and all the technical pieces. I hope they announce something like this at the Sony E3 Keynote on Tuesday.
By making a software application they could give PS3 users access to huge amounts of free on-demand video content and it would let the Hulu content partners make money by having ads and viewer tracking on Hulu for targeting ads.
If they bring Hulu to PS3 there is no way that I will ever get a normal cable TV subscription again.
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