Hulu says hello
Big TV muscles in on online video
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Hulu, the US online video effort set up as a joint venture by NBC and News Corp, launched in full today.
Hulu, which we're told means "precious" in Hawaiian, has been in private beta since October. Its development was first announced in March 2007.
As well as its primary big studio backers, Warner Brothers TV and film studio Lionsgate have also signed up to pump the site with content in recent days.
The site is more akin to the BBC's streaming iPlayer than YouTube, showing full-length TV episodes and movies in decent quality Flash, and without a user upload function. See for yourself here.
There are some gems on offer including The Simpsons, Battlestar Galactica and The Big Lebowski. It's all geo-targeted on IP address, so it should only be available in the US... in theory.
Hulu is 100 per cent backed by advertising, with all shows and movies free to view. On our visit we saw both banner and video ads for Taco Bell, before and during the episode. Though it won't really be competing with YouTube on content - cats playing piano versus Arrested Development - the two sites will be battling for online advertisers' dollars.
UK broadcasters are plotting their own commercial TV aggregator in the form of Project Kangaroo, a collaboration between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4. ®
COMMENTS
@Mike
I'm with you mate. This is just a large, hot, steaming pile of hulu. Too much huhu (another Hawaiian word) about hulu.
Go Flugennock yourself
Actually, there are a number of interesting shows available on Hulu. Including movies, such as "Master and Commander." The advertisements are generally 15 seconds long, with three to five breaks per show, depending upon length. Some commercials go 30 seconds. But it is a helluva lot better than the two to five minutes on regular television.
Mike here needs to completely disconnect himself from the world. Thankfully, he is apparently not the target audience.
There are quality shows here. I agree that other sites offer some overlap in content, I use Hulu because it only requires that I have Flash. A couple of other sites required additional software or ActiveX control, and I said "lump that" within seconds.
Go watch your YouTube mind-trash. I will keep up with Family Guy, House, and various other shows. Barney Miller is there now, and I was able to get my fill of NewsRadio. We will continue to disagree on the value of content.
This is the a-la-carte cable that cable will not offer. I despise cable for the $55 per month I was paying for 25% of my viewing time wasted by advertisements. Essentially, I was paying $14 a month for friggen commercials. Now I pay nothing other than the Internet connection for which I was already paying, watch about a minute worth of commercials for a 45 minute show, when I want and where I want.
Again, this is the cat's tits, or something like that.
Paris, for the YouTube mind-trash.
hurrah for proxys
easy as anything if you have acess to a US server.. just yum install squid, 30 seconds of config (remember to set via off and forwarded_for off so squid doesn't pass on your originating ip), and set up your browser to use the server as a proxy.
(i have internet explorer set up for this, as the only thing I use internet explorer for is fox.com, nbc.com, and now hulu, so it doesn't affect my regular browsing)
according to hulu, i'm sitting in sunny san diego, rather than, ahem, crewe.
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