Hulu - Who Knew It’d Be So Good?
I’ve been a member of Hulu for a few weeks now and I have to say that I’m quite impressed with it. The TV networks have really come together to create one great solution for internet TV.
Hulu has a clean interface and is user friendly. It’s not over done with ads or extra stuff. It’s been streamlined and the only thing that could make it better is if the site was created with a black background and not white. That’d make the shows look so much nicer.
Hulu has a great selection of current & old TV shows, show clips, plus movies. Here are just a few of the shows available:
- The Office
- Simpsons
- Family Guy
- A-Team
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Arrested Development
- Doogie Howser, M.D.
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents
- WKRP in Cincinnati
- Monk
- Dr. Steve-O
- Keeping Up with The Kardashians
- Weekend at Bernie’s
- Bulworth
- Andy Barker P.I.
- So You Think You Can Dance
- ‘Til Death
- Scrubs
- Bones
- My Name is Earl
- And many more.
The playback seems to work well on the older Windows 2000 machine we use to stream the shows to our TV. The quality is good also. That is, compared to other streaming TV channels like ABC or the CW. It’s even getting HD quality content which will be even better.
Some Hulu features include:
- Share - Send an email to your friends about a certain show or clip.
- Embed - Put the show on your site.
- Details - What am I watching and when did it air?
- Feedback - Video issues? Report them.
- Fullscreen Playback
- Pop Out Window Playback
- Lower Lights - Makes the site background light gray instead of white.
- Rate - Rate the episode.
- Playlists - Keep track of what you watched. Even comes with RSS feeds and privacy settings.
The commercials are done right too. There are a few 30 second commercials every so often. Just like regular TV, only one, not 5 commercials at a time. Some advertisers are creating interactive and entertaining ads, others are just playing the same boring commercial over and over again.
Hulu is going to be a big hit. It has variety in shows, good playback quality, a user friendly interface and it’s free; well once you get invited. 
We’ve been enjoying Hulu for a while now at our house and thank the networks for getting together and creating a great online TV solution!
Do you think this is better then Joost?
- Zamir December 6th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11 - Windows XP
Zamir - I can’t say that I’ve ever really used Joost. From the little I have, I have to say that Joost has lots of shows I’ve never heard about and it requires a separate download. If Joost could run on any OS and get network TV shows in there, I’d be a lot more interested.
- Thomas December 9th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Safari 523.10 - Mac OS X
Playback on JOOST is far better in terms of quality not sure how they are doing it but the playback is near to dvd quality streaming. If HULU would get together with JOOST’s delivery would be ideal.
- Greg January 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11 - Windows XP
Hulu beats Joost in terms of material available and memory usage(the Joost software is kind of a Ram hog on my 512mb machine). I mean, its kind of like Tivo but better because those shows are there for you whenever you’re ready and you don’t even have to program anything. That’s the future of television.
- Simon Joss March 29th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.13 - Windows XP
For those of us that can’t get TV reception nor FIO….cannot afford satelite, DSL is the only alternative, HULU goes beyond any other free service…smooth streaming,generous picture quality and daily up-loads of movies and TV shows….
the few 20 sec. commercials are tolerable….
thanks HULU!
- hans peter trode July 10th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 - Windows XP
[...] of other reviewers that have done a much better job than I probably could. See this (Gizmodo), and this, this one (ThinkMac), this one, and even this one (Ars Technica). There are plenty more out there, [...]
- Hulu is Hot on The uber geeks September 1st, 2008 at 4:14 am
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