January 23, 2008
Hulu, give up your secrets.
I caught a mention of Hulu in passing, in an article primarily about Netflix vs. Blockbuster. It's a free content-streaming website in the same vein as Netflix's Instant Watching, but brought to you by the networks themselves. I don't know what the business model is, but I like it. The selection of television shows is more up-to-date than at Netflix (who keeps recommending I watch aging shows like Earth 2 and Xena), but the site is in private beta, so you have to join their list, then wait until you're invited.
We've been catching up on some semi-recent shows on Hulu by hooking up Dave's laptop to the tv. The setup is perhaps a bit out of range for a non-technical viewer, but everyone can at least watch on their PC. The quality of audio and video playback is actually better than our fuzzy antenna channels. And the shows are more current, like: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Bionic Woman, 30 Rock and The Office. Other people have talked at-length about Hulu's slick design, so I'll just add a few user-experience notes.
The first and most important issue is that the episodes I viewed have disappeared from the website. I watched the pilot of The Riches and returned to find that every episode of the series, except the small clips, was gone. But Dave and I have watched the first season of Kitchen Nightmares and they don't seem to have gone anywhere -- which is confusing. After searching the About page and the Terms of Service, I still can't determine if previously-viewed episodes are routinely going to disappear, or if this was a coincidence.
The second little feature that tweaks me is that you cannot pause or otherwise alter the playback during commercials. I understand the intent is to force the viewer to watch the ads, but if the ad comes at an inopportune time, you're stuck waiting for 15 seconds. It doesn't seem like a long time in print, but when the phone is ringing and you're waiting to pause the playback, you could easily miss a call after four rings. It would be just as effective to allow users to pause commercials, but not allow them to skip or fast-forward the ads.
You can embed videos, just like YouTube, which is great if you talk about tv a lot on your blog. I don't find it overwhelmingly useful, but here's an amusing little SNL clip, just to show you what it looks like:
Hulu is fun because we don't have cable or satellite, and 50-year-old tv antennas are tempermental (and hulking) things. Downstairs there are four networks, two of which are actually watchable through the static. Upstairs we get NBC, CBS and a French-speaking network from Quebec. And yes, I have watched American tv in French when there was nothing on in the US. Ouvrez la valise du banquier!
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