There are several new developments surrounding the popular Hulu Plus streaming service this week. For starters, they are shortening the wait time for accessing certain CW programming like The Vampire Diaries in an effort to thwart the popularity of pirated streaming of the show. The CWs Executive Vice president, Rick Haskins, says “I do think we can make a cut into piracy. It’s going to take a while for the word to get out.” We’re here to help, Rick!
Apparently about 20% of online viewing of these shows is pirated, and half of the viewing take place during the 3 day wait time. Since these shows will be now available 8 hours after broadcast, that should dramatically deter piracy. They will be shown with full advertising, just like on television.
The reasoning behind the 3 day wait time was to encourage people to view the programming on TV, rather than through online streaming, in order to get credit from Nielsen who tracks audience sizes strictly through that medium, and not through online streaming. Large audiences mean that advertisers will pay more for a commercial spot.
For people who view the free version of Hulu on their computer screen, Hulu has increased the size of their media player by 55%, have made improvements in their Face Match feature, which enables users to mouse over an actor’s face to learn more about them, such as birth date, characters played, and possibly links to social media or Wikipedia pages. The user can easily access social feeds of any actor.
Subscribers to Hulu Plus need not crowd around their computer to watch TV, however. With a streaming media device like Roku or Apple TV, you can easily view movies or TV shows on virtually any TV set.
