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Hulu Blocks Hotspot Shield Users
Well, that was fast. Two days after reporting that folks outside of the United States were using Hotspot Shield to watch Hulu, the site now blocks Hotspot Shield users — even those within the U.S. I wasn’t the first one to mention it (not by a long shot), but if I am in fact to blame for alerting the company to the “problem,” I sincerely apologize. But you did know it was only a matter of time, right?
The good news is that Hotspot Shield isn’t the only VPN service out there, and if Hulu is simply blacklisting a series of IPs from that service, others should still work. And of course, those who still want to watch the programming on Hulu but can’t access it will probably just go somewhere else — torrent indexes and streaming sites like Megavideo, Supernovatube and, my personal favorite, Ninjavideo.
And of course none of those sites have pesky advertising. So Hulu, if you are reading, let me be the one to point out that you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Experience The Girlfriend Experience Online First
Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience got plenty of buzz after a special screening at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. Shot on the relatively thin dime of $1.7 million in only 16 days using the RED digital camera and starring adult performer Sasha Grey, it was a wild enough experiment as a motion picture production. Even wilder is its motion picture distribution experiment, since it’s now available on Amazon Video On Demand as a $9.99 rental — even though its premier was just last Wednesday at the Tribeca Film Festival and it won’t be in theaters until May 22nd.
The minimal expense and maximal margins of digital distribution mean the film can take that chance. And the upside for the producers — among them Mark Cuban, who will also be airing it on his HDNet later this month — is potentially astounding. But even if it didn’t have a racy subject and a well-known porn starlet, or a big name director and cutting-edge cinematography, by releasing it online the film stands to take advantage of online promotion and marketing in a way that others can’t.
How to Watch Hulu Around the World
Updated: For all sorts of complicated legal and contractual reasons, Hulu is not officially available to users outside of the United States. However, funny thing about the web — geographic restrictions have a way of being difficult to enforce.
And so it was with some delight that I noticed in a postscript about Hulu adding classic ’90s sitcom News Radio that a friend in Canada was suggesting an easy solution to watching Hulu north of the border: a free VPN service called Hotspot Shield.
Fox News Columnist Roughed Up by Wolverine Leak
Roger Friedman, who writes the “Fox 411″ entertainment column for the Fox News web site, may or may not have been fired over the weekend for a piece published Thursday that included a glowing review of the leaked X-Men Origins: Wolverine workprint — produced by fellow News Corp. property 20th Century Fox.
Update: Friedman has left Fox News, according to a statement.
The piece itself has since been pulled from the web site, but archived copies remain:
Right now, my “cousins” at 20th Century Fox are probably having apoplexy…But everyone can relax. I am, in fact, amazed about how great “Wolverine” turned out…I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer.
Friedman went on to exclaim that he could easily find all sorts of top movies and television online to stream and watch. “It’s so much easier than going out in the rain!” he gushed.
Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. Friedman.
Wolverine Workprint Leaked Online
The Hugh Jackman cat is out of the bag, as a workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine dated March 2nd (the film’s release date is currently scheduled for May 1st.) is now roaming the Internet. The copy is being called “DVD quality,” because it’s clearly a straight digital transfer with no visible watermarks or timecode. But I’d say it’s a stretch to call something DVD quality when you can see the wire work and much of special effects are missing (though the New Zealand locations are stunning as usual).
Twentieth Century Fox has already armed and fired the propaganda cannon in response, but will this really affect the market?
Indies Lose an Outlet as Cruxy Closes Doors
While nobody knows how the media economy of the future will eventually work, it’s clear that independent producers will continue to struggle if Cruxy’s story is any indication. The site offered well-engineered tools for marketing, selling and distributing digital media in open, customer-friendly formats. And it’s going out of business.
Cruxy, where independent artists and producers could sell creative content, will be shutting down at the end of the month. “Cruxy is not needed or used by enough people for us to keep going,” co-founder Nathan Freitas wrote in his goodbye letter — entitled “the fat lady has uploaded her song.”
BBC Trust Boosts Web Budget, Cuts TV and Film Money
The BBC Trust, which watches over the broadcaster’s budget on behalf of UK citizens who pay the license fee that funds operations, has agreed to a £30.7 million ($44.3 million) budget increase for the BBC’s web ventures. That brings the total to more than £145 million a year for the next three years.
Meanwhile, traffic to online video web sites has risen 40.7 percent in the UK over the last 12 months, with YouTube garnering 62.9 percent of those visits, according to the Beeb. Further, traffic to the BBC’s iPlayer is up 152.1 percent, and is second to YouTube among video sites with an 11.2 percent share. Hopefully the budget increase will be enough to cover the growing bandwidth bill.
The extra money comes at a time when the BBC is otherwise scaling back, and it comes with some conditions.
Catching up with Caution Zero’s Stephen McCandless: Turning “Funny” into Money
A little over two years since NewTeeVee came online, we’re catching up with some veterans who’ve been working with the medium since before Google paid off YouTube’s VCs, Hulu was just a glint in News Corp. and NBC Universal’s eye and Apple hadn’t taken up its set-top box hobby. This is the third in a series by one of the original NewTeeVee writers, Jackson West. See also part 1: Chuck Olsen and part 2: The Burg.
Stephen McCandless of Caution Zero Network manages to be winningly sincere about producing drama and comedy, while remaining unsentimental about his goal of making it pay. Cherub: the Vampire with Bunny Slippers managed to find an audience among Buffy fans when videos online was still something new and exciting to many. “My goals were unabashedly commercial,” he wrote in an email. “My interest was in figuring out if there was any way for artists to support themselves through online media.” Unfortunately, he still hasn’t found the magic formula. “The online ‘business model’ is still unproven — at least for those of us not named ‘Joss Whedon.’,”he wrote.
Catching up with The Burg: Is There Hope for Hipsters?
A little over two years since NewTeeVee came online, we’re catching up with some veterans who’ve been working with the medium since before Google paid off YouTube’s VCs, Hulu was just a glint in News Corp. and NBC Universal’s eye and Apple hadn’t taken up their set-top box hobby. This is the second in a series by one of the original NewTeeVee writers, Jackson West. See also part 1: Chuck Olsen.
Hipsters in bread lines — that’s what it’s come to in “Depression,” the very special Christmas episode of The Burg, the long-running web series produced by Dinosaur Diorama’s Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley devoted to lovingly mocking the foibles of the young and hip in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The All-For-Nots (the faux Billyburg band featured in another eponymous production from Grace and Woodley) even pop in to spread some holiday cheer and drop some final product placement mentions. But it’s not all faux: When Paul (woodley) mentions Vuguru founder Micahel Eisner, Courtney (Kelli Giddish) asks, “Wait, you guys actually make money doing this?” And as unbelievable as it sounds, the answer is yes.
However, it’ll be a while before Grace and Woodley — or anyone on the show’s cast or crew — are in danger of becoming trustafarians. Street cred may have paid off, but it’s still no way to fund a 401k.
Catching Up with Chuck Olsen: Fighting the Good Fight Takes Funding
A little over two years since NewTeeVee came online, we’re catching up with some veterans who’ve been working with the medium since before Google paid off YouTube’s VCs, Hulu was just a glint in News Corp. and NBC Universal’s eye and Apple hadn’t taken up their set-top box hobby. This is the first in a series by one of the original NewTeeVee writers, Jackson West.
Chuck Olsen has been called “Minnesota’s Video Ambassador” by one of the premier news destinations in the online video community. OK, that would be NewTeeVee — but the Minneapolis resident chronicled the growth of online publishing in Blogumentary, was a pioneer in Web-enabled community news with MNStories, and spent 2008 doggedly covering politics from the primaries to the recounts for The UpTake. Since it’s not clear whether Norm Coleman or Al Franken will get the last laugh in court, Olsen still has some hard news to cover while the national press pours over photos and videos of first lady Michelle Obama, hoping beyond hope that they miraculously find a fetus. But does serving the public interest pay?
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