Fresh on the heels on Netflix’s big announcement that they were introducing offline streaming, another big name said they’re not far behind.
Speaking at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, Hulu’s Senior Vice President and Head of Experience Ben Smith said that they’re “working on it” (offline streaming) and he added that they weren’t alone. Smith promised Hulu would “get there, for sure,” most likely in 2017.
Smith was speaking about how people consume their television now, and noted that more and more people are going towards the “little rectangle” of mobile devices, and they’re moving away from the “big rectangle” of TV. Hulu is available on a wide variety of devices, but there’s a growing band of people who watch almost exclusively on mobile.
Hulu said they’re starting to focus on where people actually watch, because someone watching in bed isn’t going to watch the same as someone sitting at a bus station.
The top Hulu exec said that for them, offline viewing isn’t just about the ability to watch content without a connection, but to more about how people consume bandwidth.
The ability to download a Hulu video and and watch it later could go a long way towards reducing unnecessarily bandwidth usage, Smith said. He added that in 2017, he feels bandwidth usage will be one of the most popular topics, especially for mobile users.
