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Hulu has long been one of the many black eyes plaguing the Google TV platform. Shortly after Google TV launched to market, the big TV content providers started blocking all Google TV devices from being able to access online television content from official network websites. Shortly thereafter, Hulu was blocked as well.

This all happened about 9 months ago, when Google TV debuted. This week I jumped on over to Hulu.com from my Google TV browser to see if anything had changed. Sadly, it has not. Google TV users still get the below message when they attempt to access Hulu.

This is the same message that was displayed when Hulu was initially blocked on Google TV. But wait, shouldn’t we all rest assured that Hulu is “working hard to bring our Hulu Plus subscription service to Google TV!”? Uh huh, apparently not. They aren’t working very hard, since it has been 9 months and it still isn’t available.

To me, this message translates as “Screw you Google and screw you Google TV users, signed, Hulu”.

So what is the hold up? Why the heck can’t we watch Hulu shows on Google TV? Danny Sulivan over at SearchEngineLand wrote a good piece on the subject and basically it comes down to business politics and posturing. There is absolutely no technical reason why Hulu doesn’t run on Google TV, it’s just the will of the television networks. The TV networks are in the advertisement business and so is Google, which makes the networks fear the big online behemoth.

I was initially flummoxed by the networks’ decision to block Hulu from Google TV, but especially since Hulu Plus never made an appearance. After all, one of the primary “features” of a Hulu Plus subsciption is to allow access on a wide range of TV devices.

But now things are a bit different. Hulu is up for sale. Rumors are running rampant that Yahoo, Amazon, Google, Dish Network and others are bidding on a Hulu buy out.

With the impending sale now out in the open, I’ve now got to wonder, has Hulu blocked Google TV and refused to provide a Google TV Hulu Plus app all this time simply as a sales tactic? Google is rumored to be one of the top bidders in the sale, so denying their TV product access to Hulu’s vast content library may have been a strategy all along to get the big G interested in a purchase.

No matter what the backroom reasoning is, one thing is for certain, Hulu has pissed off both its Hulu Plus subscribers and other Google TV customers with this anti-customer, content-blocking behavior. We’ll see if that changes once the ownership of the site changes hands, if a sales deal is actually ever agreed upon.

Amazon announced their long rumored tablet offering today, a 7″ Wi-Fi device named the Kindle Fire.

The Fire will burn onto the scene on November 15th (preorders available now) at an amazingly low price of $199, making it an instant contender in the tablet arena, at least in price.

CEO Jeff Bezos was short on specs, instead highlighting the many capabilities of the upcoming tablet.

Not Android as you know it

Amazon has built a custom UI on top of an unspecified version of Android for the Kindle Fire. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. In fact, I hesitate to call this an Android tablet at all.

The Kindle Fire won’t support the Android Market, it won’t look like Android and you won’t have the flexibility and freedom that a standard Android device offers.

Instead, the Kindle Fire’s custom UI will feature tight knit integration into Amazon’s many digital services: Amazon Video On Demand, Amazon MP3′s and Music, Kindle eBooks, Cloud storage, the Amazon Android Market and more.

I don’t think any other company could pull off a locked down Android-based tablet like this except for Amazon. With Amazon’s rich service offerings, the device & integration sounds promising.

Will it hack?

At this point, there has got to be thousands (millions?) of Android enthusiasts out there all pondering the same question: Is this thing hackable?

A $199 tablet that could be modded to run a stock Android OS, giving full control and flexibility to the user, would be an enticing product. Of course, that is certainly something that Amazon wouldn’t like to see happening, so we’ll have to wait and see what control mechanisms, if any, they’ve built into the device to try to block flashing custom firmware.

The other question is the tight Amazon service integration. If you flash to a standard Android OS, will you be able to use all the awesome Amazon cloud services offered by the stock Kindle Fire? If not, that in itself is a good reason not to flash your Fire.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on the scene to see what develops. Odds are that someone will figure out how to flash a standard Android OS onto this puppy soon after it launches.

Are you interested in the Kindle Fire?

Netflix adds new content partnerships

Amid all the controversy surrounding the changes Netflix has undertaken, what will matter most in the long run is content. This is always the case. Supply and demand.

Blu-ray Disc didn’t just beat HD DVD in the war of ages because it’s a better format, but because the studios backing the format held the vast majority of content available, including 9 out of 10 summer blockbuster movies newly released amidst the format war. Now streaming is the new media war front, and Netflix took the early lead but is stumbling.

The streaming war isn’t a zero sum game because Amazon and iTunes can coexist without forcing consumers to own two set top boxes or chose between the two, but this is where much of the competition has taken place over the past few years. There are two fronts in this war: content and subscribers.

Content attracts subscribers, and subscribers attract content. This is the rule, and it plays out slowly. Investment in content can produce subscribers, as Hulu has done. And subscribers can seduce content, as YouTube has done.

It is in this environment that the Netflix team finds themselves. It’s hasn’t been great for them this year. They’re losing subscribers, and they’ll soon be losing content. They’re so much the leader in video streaming that manufacturers have “Netflix” buttons on their remotes; even Sony does, and they have a competing service of their own.

Netflix is fighting. This month, Netflix has announced Discovery and Dreamworks Animation are both new partners, providing content to their streaming service. (It’s redundant to say Netflix has a “streaming service” because Netflix will soon only be a streaming service.)

Netflix wants your business back.

On September 19th, I put my Netflix account in an “on hold” status. This is the day that the new Netflix price increases were set to kick in for my account.

With my account in an on hold status, I won’t receive any Netflix service, but more importantly, they won’t receive any of my money, as all billing is halted.

So why did I do it and why am I writing about it? This move is just my little way of protesting their price increases, their poor “justifications” and their anti-customer behaviors. After all, the strongest consumer voice is the wallet.

Interestingly enough, the same day that I put my account on hold, Netflix announced that they were spinning off their DVD & Blu-ray Disc rentals into an entirely separate service dubbed Qwikster.

When I heard that Qwikster would require completely separate billing and queue management, I actually wasn’t that shocked. Netflix has been making dumb decisions and pissing off customers for quite some time now. By now I just expect them to do things that aren’t customer friendly.

I haven’t yet decided on whether I will be fully cancelling my Netflix account or removing the hold to reactivate service. At this point I’m still thinking about it and waiting to see what else the company will (or won’t) do.

In related news, I didn’t receive an email from Netflix regarding the Qwikster spin-off and I didn’t receive the “apology” email from CEO Reed Hastings, maybe because my account is on hold? If so, WTF?

According to rumors online, Netflix could lose up to 1/3 of their subscribers due to the recent fiascos. Is your service with Netflix or Qwikster still active or are you cutting them off?

Netflix apologizes. Is it enough?

The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, send out an email to all Netflix subscribers apologizing for how he handled the recent pricing adjustments. That’s right, they’re not sorry they raised prices, they’re sorry about how they handled the announcement. The apology begins,

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.

I’m not sure people responded the way they did because the announcement was worded poorly. I’m pretty sure it was because the price increase, and the justification for it, were out of line with consumer expectations.

The explanation remains,

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

That’s right, the price increase is necessary because Netflix wants to market the services we’re already paying for to us differently.

Of course I might just be treading old ground here and burying the lead: Netflix will no longer deliver DVDs by mail. That sounds worse than it is. Netflix is rolling out Qwikster (which sounds like a convenience store) for the DVD service, and the Netflix brand will stick with streaming. There will be two different websites, and two different queues (another WTF? for Netflix, though Hastings is aware this is a “negative”).

On the plus side, Qwikster will be adding upgrade options for video game rentals. We’ll discuss the costs when they are announced.

Clearly the handling of the price change was poorly executed. They announced the plans a couple months before the changes happened, and then about a month after that they’re splitting the business in two. In the meantime, they lost millions of subscribers.

But even this apology was handled poorly, because it’s really an announcement for Qwikster, which should have had its own announcement.

How should it have been done? Netflix should have held off any plans for the future until they announced Qwikster, at which point they could have told their Netflix subscribers that Netflix was out of the DVD-by-mail business, and all accounts would become $7.99 per month streaming accounts. Then point their subscribers to the new Qwikster service for those who want to sign up, and even offer coupons for loyal subscribers for free upgrades or a month free at their current DVD limit level.

Hey Reed, I’m available any time you want advice. Hit me up.

Netflix lets Starz walk away

After months of negotiation, Starz has decided to walk away from Netflix at the end of the year, taking thousands of instant streaming movies and TV programs with them. Starz licensed many of the higher profile Sony and Disney movies to Netflix for streaming, including Pixar titles.

I’d like to think Netflix has plans for the future to keep their subscribers and even gain some more, especially in the face of growing competition, so I’m holding my breath in hopes they have a card they haven’t played yet. To let a big fish like Starz walk away without a backup plan is certainly a bad move.

Time will tell if Netflix didn’t try hard enough. There are rumors of Netflix getting more content directly from the source instead of a third-party like Starz. But it’s also possible Starz is trying to be even more like HBO and demanding anyone who has access to their content pays subscriber fees. This might be more realistic based on the statement from Starz about maintaining “premium” content.

As far as HBO is concerned, they said they’re willing to stream their content, but only if every subscriber pays $20 per month. Certainly Netflix wants to keep their subscriber fees low, and adding $20 for HBO and $20 for Starz would make their subscriber accounts nearly as much as basic cable.

Maybe Netflix should use premium tier pricing like the cable companies in order to maintain their leadership role, and take on the cable companies. If Netflix could stream HBO or Starz video on demand for an additional $20 per month, it’s equivalent to adding it to your cable bill. Cable doesn’t provide this on demand, but they would probably maintain first-run status.

I’m just “thinking out loud” right now, but this little impasse between Starz and Netflix will certainly put a damper on what content I personally can watch on Netflix. Many of the movies I’ve watched this year have started with the Starz logo.