Hulu.com is Excellent

Today I got invite to private Hulu.com Beta. Looks like they are expanding their beta user base, and I was lucky to get in on this next round. Though, pretty soon they will go public, I’m sure.

So, first impressions are positive! The navigation is pretty intuitive, though I did not see an easy way to navigate to other seasons of things. These are very minor, the important positives are:

• High Quality — Duhh!!! This is a single most important issue today for streaming video on the web, and so far I am very positively impressed with hulu!

• Streaming — On Demand TV is here, for real, finally!

• Huge Library — Since it’s an official effort by several major studios, they actually have Quality Content! OMG! Simpsons! House MD! Journeyman! Monk! Pretender! The list goes on and on. It looks like they are mixing old classics with new favorites, great formula, if you ask me!

Stop the presses! I can embed entire episodes or show snippets in my blog!!! This is so big that I worked hard to modify the layout of my blog and make it wider to accommodate their excellent wide-screen video size.

And now, without any further delay, check out this funny Simpsons episode! Which, hilariously enough, investigates Tivo and the demise of traditional TV model.

Remember! You saw it here first!

PS: After additional confirmation, I see that video embedded on my blog appears to be slightly lower quality than the one you would get to see on hulu.com, plus the Full Screen feature only available on Hulu.com

Comments #

Comment by Boris on 2007-11-29 09:04:18 -0500 #

Well, another drawback I can point to, is that only You, people residing in America, can see the content… I, in my turn, can only see the ” Unfortunately that content is not available in your country or region…” …
Didn’t we say Internet erases borders and distances? 😉

Comment by Adi R on 2007-11-29 16:49:45 -0500 #

You are correct, I forgot to mention the non-availability anywhere outside USA, sorry.
Since this is official company backed by major studios, they have some licensing restrictions. But, I read on their site that they are working on it…
Another concern that I heard from Leo on the infamous TWIT podcast is that there is no option to download the shows for keeps or for watching on the go. This is also a valid point, and I can see where they are concerned with DRM when letting people download shows. But, I also think they need to work on this, since so many people want this functionality, so we’ll see what develops!