If Hulu were to move to using the video tag, what sorts of protection are available for them? How do they keep people from skipping the commercials?

Right now, I think they could:

  • Chop up the show into h.264 chunks (each chunk == between commercial breaks)
  • Use javascript to dictate when things happen (commercial plays, next chunk is loaded, etc)
  • And use some sort of authentication to make sure that a chunk isn't sent to a client that isn't authorized to view it yet (like before the commercial ends)

I wonder if/when this sort of setup will happen?