Merry Christmas from hulu. A homepage screenshot.
Finally, I present to you with limited interruptions, my review of hulu.com. I followed the instructions on how to ‘Sign up for the hulu private beta (currently limited to users in the U.S.)’ sometime in September and then I waited. I waited patiently as other major entertainment sites reviewed the site and hyping it as the next best thing. I continued to wait until the day my temporary login information finally arrived to my gmail account about a month later. I know, that means I’ve been enjoying hulu.com since the end of October and I’ve been so busy watching videos that I haven’t had time to write a full review until now.
The site is well organized, simple and effective. Visually pleasing and easy to navigate from show to show and to the next episode of the series you are watching. No pop-up window players here. The player loads within the same page, in a somewhat classy letterbox view. A title and brief description of the video appears above the player and a small rectangle ad in the upper right. Related videos and viewer comments below on video clips and other episodes from that season are below the player on full episodes. The player reveals options when it is ‘moused-over’ such as the option to play the video in a “pop-out” window, to go full-screen, and to “lower lights” of the rest of the page (a clever feature that adds to the aesthetics of the viewing experience).
Tina Fey in ’30-Rock’ with displayed menu options.
Currently video playback can range from perfectly clean and crisp, even full-screen on a cinema display, to downright un-watchable on any screen. Much like when ABC.com launched their video player playback can be choppy and what little buffering the player does isn’t much help. The site is still beta testing so I’ll let minor playback glitches like that slide, but the HD videos are even slower to load and experience even more choppiness than regular videos. This presents a more fundamental problem for hulu on how to achieve proper streaming videos with HD quality. That’s one problem I’ll leave up to the experts.
The greatest aspect of hulu, and what I think puts it ahead of ABC, is seamless play. The spots that run during your episode are generally 15 seconds long with the occasional 30-second spot and they play within the original player. Your video automatically starts back up when the spot is done running which means no more clicking ‘continue’ or intrusive and loud spots to interfere with your enjoyment. It is what online television should be… TV online. You watch the same shows and in the same format but on your computer and with DVD like pausing, fast-forwarding, and rewinding capabilities.
The only thing that could possibly rival seamless playback is the selection that hulu has to offer. From the ‘A-team’ and ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ to ‘The Riches’ and ’30-Rock’. The selection is massive, spans decades and encompasses NBC’s and News Corps. broad reach of stations (including FX, USA, Bravo, NBC, Fox and more).
Did someone say ‘St. Elsewhere’?
ABC might have been first but this new, and surprising, pairing between these two media giants has upped the bar. It really was the only way to try and compete against ABC and iTune’s. Why buy a show on iTune’s when I can stream it for free in roughly the same quality (and limited interruptions)? While I’ve never been a big purchaser of single episodes of TV shows online I am an avid watcher of streaming shows on ABC.com (I’ve only ever seen my new favorite show ‘Pushing Daisies’ online) and have joined the ranks of the many other hulu fans helping out with the beta testing.
Hulu might not yet be open to the public, but hopefully once it is they can get past the strange name and figure out that it is a great portal for quality content in a simple and elegant player. It isn’t everyday I root for something that is competing against a Disney product, but maybe this will make their site better, and bring on some old school Disney content. Hulu really is that good. If anything the site is a little plain but I prefer facebook to myspace, so that should say a lot as well.
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