Hulu are gearing up for the Hulu Plus suscription serve by looking to aquire more bounty content. Hulu know it is going to be a hard sell, trying to get viewing audience to coughing up $9.95 per month to haul more shows and back chronological successions. One way is to get some more premium content so they hope to have both channels sign-language(a) up by the time the Hulu subscription beta service begins.
Insiders are suggesting that a beta test of “Hulu Plus” could launch as soon as next week, with a selected group of 10,000 viewers. Viacom who own MTV and Comedy Central, pulled both The Daily Show and The Colbert chronicle from Hulu back in April, and the website’s visitor count has dropped significantly. Hulu wants them back, and with good reason. The gain of CBS, which is the only one of the four major networks that does not own part of Hulu will mean the service carries all major premium content.
Of course, the big test will be how many viewers feel the live internet tv service deserves a slice of their paycheck. Or they may just watch the streams from other sources of course.
Microsoft launched Bing to compete with the might of Google, and after seeing the popularity of online tv they have improved their amusement section to include streaming video, and comprehensive tv episode names. Bing have also added music, lyrics and online games.
The changes come after Bing has seen entertainment becoming more important to web users. “In the field of entertainment, 76% of reside use search to help find and navigate their entertainment options online, but only 10% say they have a trusted place to go,” writes Bing’s senior VP, Yusuf Mehdi. By becoming a one-stop shop for a compartmentalisation of entertainment needs, Bing still the number 3 search engine is hoping the changes will keep searchers on their pages.
Bing expand tv show search
An example of how Bing is hearing to users comes with the addition of lyrics. Bing saw the figure of 70% plus of users searched for lyrics on the web, so added a novel way for searchers to find lyrics. It licensed over 5 million songs for full-length streaming via Microsoft’s Zune service, however users can only listen to a full song once. After the initial full-length play, users will hear a 30 second clip of the song and will be redirected to a purchase page.
The survey of 500 tv viewers aged between 13-65 showed that 89% wanted interactive television apps running play on the home tv, and the rest saying they are very interested in the apps. Interestingly respondents were interested not just in the tv content but also the commercials. 73% said they would like to see an app which lets them asking surplus information about a company or product after watching an ad, women showed a stronger interest in this, being the shopaholics they are.
Ellen Dudar, FourthWall’s chief product officer said:- “This survey reveals that TV watchers, men, women, unexampled, old — from all across the tell are excited about interactive television,”
The survey also revealed:-
Females, and moreso aged over 30, were among the most interested in interactive TV applications, as 57% of females surveyed “strongly agree” that these applications make television watching more convenient.
Of the 82% of TV viewers who say they surf the web on PCs while also watching TV, 31% said they would drop cloth less time using computers if they had memory access to these applications on TV.
This is good news for internet connected tv, so long as they give users access to the web rather than restrict them to a fistful of apps.