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Hulu Reappraised
By Dave Peterson | April 20, 2008
Several months ago, I discussed my choices and techniques for viewing television shows. Like a lot of other technology-enabled people, I’ve moved almost completely away from the concept of scheduled television (couldn’t be happier about that!) and now watch the shows that interest me on my own schedule, often on whatever playback device will work best for me at any given time.
In that post, I briefly discussed Hulu.com, a web venture from NBC Universal and News Corp, for online distribution of their television content. At the time, I had checked it out in its private beta. This was shortly after NBC broke with Apple, pulling all NBC-owned content from the iTunes Music Store. I found Hulu a poor substitute for purchased downloads from iTunes for a couple of reasons: There were commercials, and I was tied to a Flash-enabled computer to view the shows. Those are both still true of the service, but last night I gave it another try for an episode of Battlestar Galactica. And I was favorably impressed.
As I said, the two strikes against are still there, but I think they’re manageable. Commercials are very brief, a total of about 75 seconds divided between about five breaks, rather than the 15 minutes that commercials would occupy in the same show on conventional television. Commercials are still an intrusion, but not an unmanageable one. And while the viewer is tied to a computer, this does offer a few advantages over something like Apple TV. While the diagonal inches of viewing area is likely smaller, the resolution is better. The viewing window can be made to appear in a resizable pop-up, allowing the potentially distracting framing of the web site to be minimized. There’s also a “Lights Down” option that darkens the non-viewing areas of the page, emphasizing the part that interests you. Streaming is very good; in a 43-minute program (coming to my laptop over G-class Wi-Fi) I only once encountered buffering stutter, and it was a split-second thing, hardly noticeable.
I wouldn’t call Hulu an optimal viewing experience for new (not yet on DVD) television, but I’m not sure there is an optimal choice at the moment. Everything has its own trade-offs and compromises, but all things considered, Hulu’s a much stronger option for non-scheduled television viewing than I would have originally thought.
Topics: Video |
April 20th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Kudos for using Hulu and watching Battlestar. I use the service a lot, when I forget to record shows on Media Center.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
In healthy eating there is a concept of a “better bad choice.” That is what Hulu is. It isn’t as bad as it could be, but it also isn’t as good as it could be.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Hey Dave!!! How are you my good friend?
Just wanted to let you know… Hulu.com came to my ad agency today and I was there for their presentation.
I was quite impressed with not only the limited commercial TV shows (they even promote CBS shows, but direct you to CBS versus playing them on Hulu) but also the growing number of movies they have!
Pretty cool group of people. But I agree w/ Neal, it’s not where it needs to be, IMO.
Just my 2 cents.