The Other Drummer

Today Hulu announced a new product, Hulu Plus. For just $9.99 per month you get full current seasons popular TV shows (not just the five most recent episodes) and entire past seasons as well.

You will be able to get all seasons of (but not limited to):

• The Office
• X-Files
• Arrested Development
• Heroes
• 30 Rock
• SNL
• Dancing with the Stars
• Grey’s Anatomy

You can see the entire list here.

Watch out Comcast

By signing up with Hulu, networks are effectively bypassing cable companies and creating their own distribution network. It’s the cable companies’ worst dream come true: they’ve become dumb pipes. And when your only differentiation from your competition is speed and bandwidth, Moore’s Law takes over and prices fall. Sorry suckas! (But not really.)

Everyone wins

This is great news for the consumers. Instead of paying $78/month for cable (and a bunch of shows you don’t want to watch), cancel your cable (or drop it down to basic cable so you still have your local news and sports) and keep your Internet. Pay Hulu $9.99 per month and get the most popular shows streaming whenever you want them; no cable bill, no DVR hardware nor DVR subscription fees to worry about. Watch them wherever you want – no Slingbox required.

The networks win because they’re doing what iTunes did for digital music – making it so affordable and so easy to legitimately get media that most folks won’t find it worth the effort to pirate it.

OK. That was a lie. Not everyone wins. The cable companies take one giant step toward obsoleteness. Suckas!

Hulu – Not just on your computer

Another perk of Hulu plus is that you’ll be able to watch your content on your HDTV. Yes, content is coming in HD and will be streaming to certain Internet-enabled TVs, Blu-Ray players, set-top boxes, game consoles and – here’s the kicker – the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.*

I’m so excited about that I think I just wet myself a little.

Bonus: Save money on DVDs

Want to catch up with Psych (great show) and see if you can find the pineapple in each episode? You could go buy all four seasons for, on average, $30 per season or you can plunk down $9.99/month and watch them all over a couple of months. Then, if you really love it and want to invest in the DVDs you can do so.

What do you think? Is it this really as earth-shattering as I’m making it out to be? Would you kill your cable TV and just go with Hulu? Leave word in the comments.

UPDATED: As Zach mentioned below, there will still be ads in the shows. Does it suck? Yes. Does it mean they have the opportunity to deliver more relevant advertising which, hopefully, won’t be as annoying? Yes. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

* The apps are available now in the App Store but the service isn’t so I haven’t had a chance to see how well the work.

Cracked. Me. Up.

From the FAIL Blog.

Got this error trying to open Google Reader in Google Chrome.

I really, really hate it when companies try to make it sound like they’re doing you some big favor when they aren’t.

“Hey, you seem like a nice guy. So here’s what I’m going to do for you…”

I detest it.

Two recent examples come to mind.

Apple

When the agency laptop battery exploded our IT guy took it to the Apple Genius Bar. The “Genius”, after treating our IT guy with 16+ years experience like a 6th grader, said, “Well, these are normally $179 but I’ll replace it for free.”

Gee, YA THINK?

The conversation should have gone more like this:

“Hi. This happened to my laptop. I was…”

“Oh, wow. I am so sorry. Yeah, we’ve had problems with these batteries and I’m so sorry this happened. Would you mind waiting a minute while I go to get you a replacement battery?” [After returning with the battery.] “There. This one shouldn’t give you any more trouble. Let’s turn on the laptop and make sure there wasn’t any damage. Working? OK, good. Again, I’m really sorry for this happening. I know it’s not much, but I’d be happy to offer you a $5 iTunes gift card for your trouble.”

Instead of acting like some self-righteous, faux-benevolent retail cog he should have been apologizing profusely. THE PRODUCT EXPLODED after all.

Comcast

When I got out of the shower and walked into my bedroom to get dressed last week I saw the shadows of two guys against the blinds. Creepy. I got dressed in the bathroom.

A few minutes later at about 8:30 there was a phony-sounding “tap-tap-tuh-tap-tap…tap-tap” at my front door. It was the guy who’d been lurking outside my bedroom window! Just who I wanted to see as I was walking out the door to go to work!

He explained that I was getting more channels than I was paying for. I was aware of this as we had called Comcast and told them but it apparently took them three years to get around to checking it out.

The short version (yes, there is a longer version which I will most likely write about later) is after lurking outside my bedroom window unannounced, knocking on my door at 8:30 in the morning and then trying to do a high-pressure upsell he had the nerve to say, “You’ve been really nice about this. [Note: I've said about four words the entire time.] I can give you the premium (or standard, or whatever it was) service for $29.99 for six months.”

Don’t BS me, jerk. Comcast advertises their “$X for Y months” promotions all the time. Don’t act like you’re being all nice to me and making some giant concession on my behalf when you’re really just trying to score some kind of commission for yourself.

I’ll end here. But, like I said, more later on the Comcast bit.

Image courtesy of here.

Check it:

Looks pretty good to me. Expected, but good. Give them some time to mess around a bit and get really comfortable with the platform and I think it’ll be even better.

While this video demonstration alone doesn’t make me want to run out and buy an iPad right away, I’d definitely pay extra for a digital subscription along side the standard print version.

On a separate note, digital print publications (I may have just coined a new term) will have the ability to track effectiveness of advertising in a way never before possible. Think about it: instant A/B testing in a print publication. Push out the new edition, give it a week, then replace the lower performing of the two ads. Never before possible in “print” media. Plus, you can get data on exactly who sees your ad, for how long and whether or not they interact with it.

What did you think of the video? Did it get you excited for the iPad?