Hulu.com Opens to Public, Offers Free Streams of Hit TV Shows, Movies and Clips

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2008/03/12/hulucom-opens-to-public-offers-free-streams-of-hit-tv-shows-movies-and-clips/' target='_blank'>http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2008/03...vies-and-clips/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>&quot;Beginning today, consumers in the U.S. can go to Hulu.com to watch a large selection of hit TV shows, movies, clips and more in high-quality &ndash; anytime, for free. In addition, Hulu announced new content partnerships with the Warner Bros. Television Group, Lionsgate, NBA, NHL and more than 20 other top content providers. New content additions to Hulu&rsquo;s library will include: feature films like The Usual Suspects and Ice Age, shows like Dirt, The Incredible Hulk, Babylon 5, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Dick Van Dyke Show, nightly highlights, top plays and full-length games from the NBA and the NHL, popular made for web programming such as Prom Queen and Onion News Network, and much more. On Hulu.com, consumers can enjoy one of the largest selections of legal, free videos from more than 50 top broadcast networks, cable networks, movie studios and web-centric content providers.&quot;</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1205364815.usr17787.jpg" border="1" alt="" /></p><p>I tried HULU when the beta first started, and found the quality and selection to be pretty good.&nbsp; I still prefer my cable provider for watching TV however, especially since I can record a program and skip the commercials.&nbsp; That, I'm willing to pay for.&nbsp; It remains to be seen if NBC and its partners can make a successful business model out of ad-supported online video distribution.&nbsp; I don't think it's for everyone, but I think the market is bigger than most people are predicting.</p>

[ptyork]

I tried it last night and found the quality to be pretty terrible. I watched a couple episodes of Family Guy (of the 3 that they had up) and started to watch a movie, but for me the video maybe averaged about 15fps (just a guess). Still, it was impressive I suppose that the thing never skipped from an audio perspective and it was at least watchable. Now the HDTV trailers that they had up were (at least last night) NOT watchable. Maybe 5fps at best (though again the audio was good). Perhaps the performance will improve with time as the infrastructure gets beefed up and tweaked. The selection also needs to be quite a bit more complete to keep me coming back.

Selection aside, I find Joost to be a much better experience. I suppose the need for a dedicated client is its main downfall. Still, the quality of the video is far superior.

[Tim Williamson]

When will we get something like this for Xbox 360?

[Jeremy Charette]

I tried it again last night, and they must be getting hammered. Either that or the encoding/streaming quality is just inherently bad. YouTube is is better than HULU, as it stands today. I also don't understand why they have every episode of Airwolf from Seasons 1 and 3, but no Law & Order full episodes? Sheer stupidity. Licensing and royalty issues are probably mucking up the works behind the scenes, if I had to guess.

As for ad-supported Xbox Live Video downloads, I'm not sure what the future holds. I'd like to see it, and I'd use it alot more than I use the paid service now. Maybe Microsoft could/should do a trial period, and see what the customer response and business model look like.

[timmy]

Seems like a great concept, but hampered by the old business model that the world can be divided in regions where distribution rights are regional.

I today's web world, these companies should be providing this kind of service globally. As a european it is just frustrating when I go to sites like hulu.com and get the message that "this content is not available in you region"

"Worst" example so far is the NBC "Heroes" site where they deliberately(?) allows you to view the introductory commercial before flashing the "this content..." message.