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South Park moves behind Hulu paywall starting Sept 24, 2014

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40hz:
It was bound to happen sooner or later...



From Ars Technica (full article here)

Since 2008, fans of the Comedy Central cartoon South Park have been able to stream the show’s entire library (minus a few permanently redacted episodes) from the South Park Studios site. But according to a new post on the show's official blog, this fan-friendly unlimited streaming arrangement will soon be ending: South Park is moving to Hulu. Folks who want to watch more than a limited selection of old South Park episodes will either have to resort to physical media or begin paying $7.99 per month to subscribe to Hulu Plus.

Under what the blog post describes as an "exclusive, multi-year" agreement, the current offering of streamable South Park episodes will remain available until September 24 at both the show’s official site and also on Hulu. After September 24—the start of the show’s 18th season—new episodes will be available to both standard Hulu and Hulu Plus customers the day after they air (Variety’s writeup says that the official South Park Studios site will also have next-day streaming, but that isn’t mentioned in the blog post).

The big change is the paywalling of past episodes. After September 24, free Hulu users and visitors to the show’s official site will only be able to watch "a revolving selection of free episodes." Unlimited access—which today is free—will only be available for Hulu Plus users....
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 :huh:

MilesAhead:
Heh.  The Southpark crew should do a show where Cartman bitches about it.  I'd love to see them skewer themselves(providing I don't have to pay to see it.)  :)

Renegade:
Then again, there's always the EZTV proxy... ;)

TaoPhoenix:
Oh my god! They killed South Park Fan respect!

40hz:
“This is a natural partnership for us,” said Matt Parker and Trey Stone, creators of South Park. “We are excited that the entire library will be available on Hulu and that the best technology around will power South Park Digital Studios.”




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It is a little weird to see Matt Parker and Trey Stone happily chatting around the change as if nothing happened and it's all a big win for their fans. Especially after their original discussion about why it was so important for them to be able to make the entire archive of past episodes freely available when they first started doing it.

The real problem with a Hulu Pro subscription isn't the cost (about $8 USD/mo. last I checked) but the fact that what's included in their subscription isn't the same the whole world over. Hulu bows to local government censorship conventions regarding propriety. So there's every good likelihood SP will have certain episodes "redacted" (or the entire show embargoed) depending on which country the subscriber resides in.

Then there's all the commercials and region lockout you get with Hulu. That's something nobody in SP or Hulu will even acknowledge, let alone talk about.

Sad.

Commenter seaborgium over at Ars Technica said it best: Locking your show behind only one method of streaming is a big reason why people torrent.

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