A review of Hulu.com

Cory Bergman October 29th, 2007

The NBC-News Corp. video joint venture Hulu.com launched in private beta, and just I toured the new site. Out of the gate, the first thing you’ll notice is the clean, theater-like design. Very sharp.

I clicked to play a Heroes episode, and it loaded and played quickly. (I received an “application error” on a couple other clips I attempted to play, but I’ll chalk that up to the beta experience.)

Mouse over the player (shown above) and you get the usual controls, but also some cool additions. The “embed” function allows you to set in and out points, so you can embed just a selected chunk of a video clip on your blog. “Lower lights” dims the whitespace around the player to dark gray. “Feedback” lets you alert Hulu to an inappropriate clip or technical problems. And “Pop out” turns the video player into a pop-up. On the full-screen mode, the video quality was sharp without stuttering (480kbps or 700kbps depending on your bandwidth.) You can leave comments under the player.

No ads served on the clips that I watched, but Hulu will display a variety of ad formats, from video to banners to text to overlays. The idea is to adjust the amount of advertising to the length of the clip. But in the end, of course, the ads will be much less intrusive and not as lengthy as TV.

Hulu divided the video pages into popular episodes, popular clips and browse titles. Each have the ability to sort in a variety of fashions. Again, very clean presentation, and there are a surprising number of TV shows available at launch (Hulu just added Sony Pictures Television and MGM to its list of content partners). In the browse titles mode, Hulu will tell you if a particular show is “on air” — not actually on the air right now, but in season. Also, you can click to add clips to your playlist.

On the profile page, you can upload a photo, track your reviews (comments) and see your most recent clips you’ve viewed, which are also available in a custom RSS feed. There’s also a spot for your own video uploads, but it looks like that feature is not live as of yet.

All in all, Hulu is a very slick video presentation site with a good variety of TV shows to start. I’d rather watch a NBC or Fox show on Hulu than the respective networks’ sites — Hulu’s user experience is better, and everything loads and plays very quickly. Beyond that, Hulu is lacking user uploads, downloads and social networking — which I imagine is on the development board — so in the meantime it’s a great place to watch TV shows, but that’s about that. Any other reviews from beta testers out there?

19 Comments Add your own

1. Michael Gay | October 29th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

Cory, can you invite friends?
2. Cory Bergman | October 29th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

Unfortunately, no. They sent me one without asking.
3. Andrew Gruen | October 29th, 2007 at 8:29 pm

Michael - at least you tried!
4. Brink | October 30th, 2007 at 5:21 am

“Beta experience.”

The internet is the only place in which customers accept products (applications) that don’t work right when they are presented to the public.

Can you imagine getting a ‘beta” automobile and chalking it up to experience when the wheels fell off while you drove?

The situation won’t change, though, as long as geeks think it is exciting to “be allowed” to use applications that don’t perform correctly.
5. Hussman | October 30th, 2007 at 5:46 am

Yeah, but a “beta experience” on a website doesn’t cost you 20K+
6. Rocker | October 30th, 2007 at 6:08 am

Downloading will be important to offer as an option. A lot of betra users on the comment board are also complaining about the geo-filtering (can’t watch outside the U.S.). But it is a very elegant site…most users can almost immediately intuitively grasp how to use the various features. I think the bottom line is, between the selection of video and quality of the application, this is the best place to go to watch professional video. Not sure I agree with Cory about the need for a user upload capabilitiy…that truly is YouTube’s space. I think the strategy here is “they can have it” (as long as the user’s aren’t uploading copyrighted material)…Hulu will focus on “TV on the net”.
7. J$ | October 30th, 2007 at 6:47 am

The big ol’ elephant in the room is the ads. Just having less than TV may still be too much for most viewers. Most shows only run about 40-44 minutes running time, so while 5-10 minutes of ads would be significantly less than what’s on TV, will internet users sit through that many? I doubt it. Especially if they can just go to YouTube to see the same content ad free (albeit in a lower quality).

It’s a mistake for broadcasters to think that internet audiences are just as captive as TV audiences. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the site was released for journalists to review before the ads were place.
8. Rocker | October 30th, 2007 at 7:18 am

The evidence from the early primetime streaming initiatives of the networks is that most users will, in fact, tolerate ads in long form programming. And I also believe that most people ultimately will not choose to view pirated material when a better, legitimate option is available. Not to mention the fact that it’s soon going to get a lot tougher (legally) for YouTube to make a living off of pirated content. Will there always be ways for the technically savvy, truly determined to steal video? Yes. But then, there always have been…the internet doesn’t really change that. Most people understand a fair deal is either watching ads or paying to view professional content.
9. invitedmedia | October 30th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

here we go again “professional content” means hardly nothing online.

people are keeping themselves quite occupied online without hulu and will continue to do so.

trying to “train them to come to our content” as i read over on b&c’s comments is a hoot.

some entity tried the “tv at work” idea and there were some bosses who said “not on my clock”.

guys, if i want tv, i’ll turn one on. haven’t in over 8 weeks now and haven’t missed much… except the screaming ads.
10. Rocker | October 30th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

invitedmedia, your focus group of one is interesting, but leads you to the wrong conclusion. Social media is not going to replace professional media. What doesn’t mean anything is the term “online”. Most people will spend a certain amount of time farting around on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, and a separate allocation of time to watch the Lord of the Rings (in the future, through a multiplicity of distribution channels of their choice). I don’t see the demand for that content going away just because distribution options change/increase, and I don’t see some schmuck in Peoria supplying it. And people blogging 3rd hand about what they read from other sources doesn’t obviate the need for someone to “do real journalism” in the first place.

We get the world is changing now. But don’t overdose on the Kool Aid. And people “keeping themselves quite occupied”…careful or you’ll go blind!
11. Evan Parker | October 30th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

I’m still waiting for my invite. Any day now.
12. invitedmedia | October 30th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

who’s the one overdosing on kool aid?

the post is about hulu… the same folks who brought forward those game changers nbbc and ivillage live.

i’ll stick with my focus group of one.

btw- terry heaton has a new essay that is really worth a read coincidentally.
13. invitedmedia | October 30th, 2007 at 8:09 pm

late word from my focus group of one- less than 6 months til corporate starts calling them ‘web channels’.
14. Rocker | October 31st, 2007 at 6:33 am

invitedmedia: re; “the post is about Hulu”…yes, but you said “professional content means hardly nothing online”. I suppose anyone who’s profession is in the content business is going to take issue with that.

I don’t really know if Hulu will last…but I suspect you formed your opinion even before finishing the press release back in March. I think they might surprise…but their real problem is going to be finding a viable business model, not finding an audience. The more people watch, and want ever better quality streams, the harder it will be for them to generate a decent margin (Hulu picks up all the bandwidth costs on Hulu.com as well as all their other distribution partners, or so I read). Even incorporating P2P might not help much. And, yeah, I guess there will come the pressure for too many ads.
15. Greg | December 4th, 2007 at 10:40 am

I have been using the hulu beta. The idea is very cool. TV shows on demand. However, the streaming has been very slow for me with lots of hiccups. I tried from several different internet connections. The bottleneck is definitely on their servers.

You get halfway through a show and it stops and freezes up. Very annoying.
16. Ivan | December 7th, 2007 at 11:24 pm

The content is great and I don’t have any problem with it! The quality is far superior than expected.
17. Solo500 | December 14th, 2007 at 12:22 am

It is surprisingly good. I don’t think pulling out of iTunes was a good idea, it would have been better to keep both streaming and downloads. But Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart? Awesome.
18. Michael Spencer | March 14th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

um, NBC? why can’t I just pay $2 at the iTunes store for Lost? ’splain that again? are we sayin’ you make more from the ads than from people paying for the shows? charge more, dudes. Yea, it’s that important. Apple says ‘no’? work it out.

You know, so I can watch TV on my…what’s that thing in the living room? a TV!

Yea, that’s the ticket.

Sheesh. It must really be rocket science.
19. vm | May 9th, 2008 at 8:05 pm

To all the people who commented about Hulu’s “viability” … what say now?

To Micheal and all who think like him above … sounds like just the people who don’t understand the potential, the technology, the market and ironically got burnt during the .com bust (yes, jumped on without knowing its risks and what it was)

A TV makes you schedule your life around it. TV on the internet allows you to schedule the TV around yours without having to spend on the DVR, TiVo etc. I find myself not being disappointed if I miss a show if I know I can watch it online.

The Ads on sites like NBC.com and Hulu.com are only 30 seconds. I would rather sit through 1.5 to 2 mins of ad to watch my show for free at my own time rather than pay $2 to iTunes, or watch the TV which has atleast 8-10 mins of ads every 1/2 hour. Seriously, you’d pay $2 per episode rather than sit through 90 seconds of ads?