“When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad last month, one notable potential partner absent from the stage was Hulu, now the second-largest video site on the Web. The launch event focussed more on the iPad as an eBook reader to rival the Kindle, but watching videos on it will be just as important,” Erick Schonfeld reports for TechCrunch. “The TV shows on Hulu would be perfect on the iPad. There is just one hitch: the iPad doesn’t support Flash, and all of Hulu’s videos currently run inside a Flash player.”
“But that could change by the time the iPad launches in March,” Schonfeld reports. “One rumor I’ve heard from an industry insider is that Hulu is working on an iPad-friendly version of its site that should be ready by the time the iPad hits the market. Hulu itself is still vague about its plans. When asked directly by Om Malik whether Hulu has any plans for the iPad, CEO Jason Kilar recently hemmed and hawed about how he is a big believer in mobile, but wouldn’t confirm or deny anything.”
“Putting Hulu on the iPad boils down to a business decision, not a technical one. Getting Hulu to work on the iPad would not take as much work as some might expect,” Schonfeld explains. “The biggest challenge to getting a large video library to play on the iPad (or iPhone) is to convert the underlying video files to the H.264 standard. Fortunately for Hulu, its videos are already encoded in H.264 and have been since the summer of 2008. So it doesn’t have to go back and re-encode all of its videos. But on the front-end, it would have to create a non-Flash player (Flash plays videos encoded in H.264 as does the Quicktime player on the iPad and iPhone).”
“More importantly, all the ads that run on Hulu are designed for Flash, especially interactive ads like overlays. The ad code, business logic, and underlying analytics would all have to be rewritten for a Javascript player. Frankly, this is the biggest hurdle,” Schonfeld reports. “So porting Hulu to the iPad is not completely trivial, but Hulu has a large engineering group (including a group in China) more than capable of doing the work.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
@neomonkey… dealers on TV do it all the time!
Hulu for other countries please?
@Fundamentally Flawed
In addition to PreDrag’s suggestions, there are also writing pads, heli-pads, feedlot pads, foot pads, keypads, launch pads, gamepads, bachelor pads, shoulder pads, and pressure pads, to name but a few.
And you can only think about tampons? You have a problem. Seek treatment.
I doubt aPple would make flash be available on their idevices, for whatever reasons, whehter it’s really about draining battery and memory, I don’t know.
I believe they have considered the data and feedback they gathered from iPhones, iPod touches, ipads coming with no flash support to me is a confirmation that they won’t do it.
Hulu may be big in the us, but it’s not big of a deal in other countries.
@Mr. Reeee
Hey that would ROCK!
…”Hulu may be big in the us, but it’s not big of a deal in other countries.”
Perhaps that is because it is a US-only web-site and cannot be accessed from outside US…?
well, it’s not surprised at all. when public is demand for popular content, hosts should take action. it’s all about business. as you know, youtube also made non-flash website for iphone ipod touch. so if Hulu will make for ipad, it’s obvious for business.
Yay! That would be great news indeed!
well, this is pretty obvious, if Hulu doesn’t want their stuff on the iPad/iPhone, they’re idiotic
Does Hulu make money?
@Hulu
1. no need to convert the ads from flash to something that’ll play on iPhones, iPads and Macs equipped with ClickFlash:)
2. while we’re at it, Hulu, make your content available OUTSIDE THE US !!!!
I am afraid there are more then just a few people who are stunned by the absurd, ill-chosen nomenclature for the new iDevice.
@fundamentally flawed,
As you like to called yourself this, your fundamentally flawed brain will also always come out with fundamentally flawed analysis.
That’s some nice backwards logic you’ve got there.
Weaning the internet off of closed, proprietary horseshit like Flash and replacing it with open standards apparently makes Apple a self-focused and narcissistic control freak. How does that work, exactly? How do open standards constitute as self focussed, narcissistic, and controlling? Aren’t they the polar opposite?
In reality, isn’t the self-focused and narcissistic control freak Adobe for trying to make themselves the gatekeepers of internet content through exploiting Flash? Yes.
You don’t get along well with reality, do you?
“… when the iPad cannot display the majority of web-sites because Apple refuses to incorporate software required to render web-pages fully.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… *deep breath*…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
The majority of websites use Flash? Really? That’s a fascinating alternate universe you live in. Here in this one, it’s the vast minority. Tell me more about your strange and interesting world.
BBC in UK has offered its world leading iPlayer platform in Flash-free H.264 streams since the iPhone launched.
I imagine the BBC are going to continue to offer H.264 streams to iPad, maybe even the HD ones this time?
Can’t see why Hulu et al cannot do the same if British corporation has been doing if for nearly three years.
Saying that, and I am no fan of Flash (and run Flash blockers), but all the sites my kids interact with are Flash based. Not just some of them, all of them; same is true with my friends kids and work colleagues too. My daughters play GirlsGoGames.com and my friend’s sons play boy’s equivalent; hundreds of Flash games on these aggregated Flash portals. Similarly, old school television broadcasters (like they actually watch TV on an TV, it’s all streams on MacBooks) websites are completely flash too.
This is why my kids are not in the least bit interested in iPad, prefer their MacBooks. 🙁
The reason people think of “pads” is because of the naming structure. The brain is automatically going to find the thing most closely associated with “I” (in proximity and frequency of use) when it interprets the phrase “I pad”. And for many of the population, that won’t be a writing pad. I’m surprised more males don’t understand this. You can tut tut and mention brake pads as much as you want, that has not an iota of influence over the brain’s logic.
To any adolescent nitwit who giggles at hearing “pad” should pay attention to the dozens of other something-pad nouns listed above and the many dozens more not mentioned. The device will make its own history and the Bevis&Butthead;reaction will quickly fade and the name be regarded just like sketchpad, knee-pad, etc. It’s context and usage. Do they get all menstural-minded at words like napkin, feminine, sanitary, and the various terms which include “period”?
hehehehehe… I said iPad! Kool!