Errol Pierre-Louis |
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Hulu by Errol Pierre-Louis Ratings: 4/5 Bottom Line: Hulu is an online video service that gives you access to popular full-length TV programming and feature length films. You can view content online through the service's silky smooth streaming video player. It's an online TV viewer's dream come true. Pros: Provides a wide variety of TV programming from several sources. Clean, easy-to-navigate design. Crisp picture quality. Lets you create your own playlists and custom-length video clips to embed on your Web site or e-mail to friends. Cons: Only lets you view the latest five episodes of current on-air programs. Can't mute ads. No CBS or ABC content. Full Review: Although I've been TV-less for a while now, thanks to networks like NBC and ABC putting content online I can keep up with my favorite TV shows on my laptop. But why wade through a network's Web site to find episodes you want to see when you can have those shows and others from a variety of networks available for viewing on one easily navigated Web site? Hulu.com, an online video service, brings you a wide variety of full-length episodes, popular video clips, and even a few full-length movies you can watch right from your browser—for free. Once you've signed up for the service, you'll have access to content from Fox, NBC, Warner Bros. TV, and over 15 cable networks (Bravo, E! Entertainment, USA, and more). The site has licensing deals with Fox, MGM, Sony, Universal, Lionsgate movie studios--as well as the NBA, and NHL—to show a wide variety of content besides TV programming. To be clear, Hulu is solely for premium programming from TV and movie studios, so no lonelygirl15 or Tay Zonday videos here. And bad news for international users: Due to copyright restrictions, Hulu is available only to U.S. users. You'll find popular shows like The Office, Heroes, and Family Guy, and full-length movies like Sideways. You can even find old favorites that are now off the air, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Arrested Development, and (for those who want to go way back) the first season of Doogie Howser, M.D.. Hulu also has a ton of popular clips from TV shows, including a wide selection of hilarious digital shorts from Saturday Night Live. Since launching in private beta, Hulu has added a ton of current hit TV shows, as well as classic shows from the 90's, 80's and beyond. Hulu has a healthy selection of feature length films for a free service, mostly old favorites like The Big Lebowski and The Jerk and more recent films like Sideways. You won't find full-length current hit movies on Hulu, but the site does include clips from movies like Juno. The site's simple, clean design makes using it quick and intuitive. Finding episodes is much easier than stumbling through the ABC, FOX, or NBC Web sites. While Hulu can't beat the sheer selection of content available on something like iTunes, all the content is free and you don't have to download any accompanying software. The navigation is divided between TV and Movie sections, and you can sort content alphabetically, by genre, or most popular. For the most part, finding the shows or movies you want to view on Hulu is quick, straightforward affair. You can tell which shows and movies are full-length by the icons displayed to the left of the title. For instance, the TV icon next to the title of Nip/Tuck has no icon, indicating you'll only find clips from the series on the site. When my coworker Mark Hachman checked out an earlier beta Hulu for AppScout.com, one of his biggest complaints was that the catalog lacked depth. For on-air shows, copyright restrictions limit you to viewing the latest five episodes of the current season. But you can see more episodes of off-air shows and previous seasons of shows still airing. For example, you can watch only the past five episodes of Family Guy, but you can see all eight episodes of the The Office's fourth season. While Hulu has added much more content since it launched as a private beta, the lack of depth for hit shows might disappoint some, but it's still an impressive selection for a free service. Getting Under the Hood Hulu uses the Adobe Flash platform to play video. I've found Hulu's player to run smoother than the Windows Media or Quicktime players built into most Web browsers. You can seamlessly skip to different points in a video with little to no lag time. Hulu delivers good looking video, I'd say about comparable to standard definition TV. Even in full-screen mode, the picture stays crisp and clear. Videos automatically come across at 360 kilobits per second, 480 Kbps, and 700 Kbps to accommodate a variety of Internet-connection speeds. You can also view some 1,280-by-720-resolution movie trailers streamed at 2,500 Kbps in Hulu's HD Gallery. And when you click out of your browser or go to a different page, Hulu saves your place in the video, so you return to the same video right where you left off. Episodes start with a 5-second ad, with 30-second ads inserted into the show's natural commercial breaks. Feature films start off with a 150-second preview, with no additional ads interrupting the movie. I don't really mind the ads. I'd rather sit through about 2 minutes for a 22-minute show than the 8 minutes of ads you'd get with a half-hour of broadcast TV programming. But, annoyingly, you can't mute the ads. When you mouse over a video, several icons pop up into the interface. Selecting the Lower Lights icon will dim the areas outside of the video, making viewing a little easier on the eyes. If you choose the Share icon, you can send videos to your friends. The Embed icon gives you code to add videos to your Web site or blog. A neat feature built into the Share and Embed options lets you create custom clips to embed or to share with friends (friends who happen to be Hulu users, that is). So, for example, instead of sending an entire episode of 30 Rock, you can clip out one Tracy Morgan scene you thought was hilarious and e-mail just that section to friends. If you want to share with a wider audience, you can embed the clips on your blog. You can also create your own video playlists, adding the clips and shows you like and watching them in succession. Hulu doesn't exactly replace your TV or DVR. What it does is give you a clean, simple platform with a wide variety of crisply streaming programming to watch online. That is a big step above flipping from site to site to watch that same content. Hulu still needs to add more depth and variety to their service (CBS and ABC shows are notable omissions), but the site is headed in the right direction. Just as YouTube is the go-to site for user-generated content, Hulu could well become the site for streaming premium programming.
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