Only morbid curiosity made me sign up for an invite to hulu.com, whose name just reeks of eau de corporate office desperation, but after having checked it out for a bit (I consider this “research” for school), I’m surprised to find myself more impressed than contemptuous. The site loads quickly, and it’s clean and well-formed. I’ve grown used to how cluttered YouTube’s gotten, but I much appreciate minimalist design.
The content offerings are good if you need to catch up on the latest episodes of shows like “House” and “The Office” (i.e., NBC/Universal and Fox shows). Like, I’m super happy to find “30 Rock” on there, and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT!!!! They also have old shows, like Bob Newhart and Woody Woodpecker. I wish they’d provide more episodes, though, rather than a partial selection. Maybe that will happen later. Unless they make us pay for those, which they very well might.
Hulu uses Flash-based video, of course, but the quality is noticeably better than what you’d find on YouTube or on those Daily Show clips on Comedy Central’s site. The video quality on Hulu is similar to what you’d find on the godawful NBC TV website proper (though I haven’t tried their proprietary player, just on principle), but Hulu’s UI is way, way better. They seem to have put a lot of effort into making the video player work smoothly and look nice, too.
For instance, the “seek” function is actually functional! The cursor is precise and it works without a hitch, which is so rare. Streaming is smooth, unlike that stoopid NBC site (yes I’m bitter). Videos even resume where you left off, if you clicked to watch something else or went to another website. I know they’re tracking our every move on the site for datamining purposes, but that is a given, and at least they’re giving us something useful out of it.
Also, you can pop out videos to resize them however you want: no longer the tyranny of “bad,” “tiny,” or “awful, blocky, full-screen.” The best size, though, is the default as displayed on the web page.
There are also buttons for feedback, writing a review, rating the episode, and sharing, and even one for learning details about the clip you’re viewing, which, if the info is incorrect, you can fix via the “feedback” button. The menus work similarly to most of the other video-sharing sites.
The coolest part about sharing a video (or embedding one) is that you can select a short clip from the video, and the way to do it is awesomely easy and intuitive. I only wish you could see thumbnails of the start and end points or something, rather than having to guess and click “preview” to check, which gets annoying pretty fast. I’d embed a video but it doesn’t seem to work anywhere right now. Here’s a video I’ve linked to on my tumbleblog, since WordPress doesn’t allow embedding.
Below the video are comments and “related” videos. The site is very easy to explore, with very few annoying things about the menu and navigation (just because Amazon uses ginormous hover-based nav menus doesn’t mean it’s cool).
Also, it’s free. The episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (featuring an impossibly beautiful Robert Redford) is as free as the latest episode of “My Name is Earl.”
The biggest downside is (surprise!) the ads. They’re about what you’d expect, appearing during act breaks like regular commercials, but that doesn’t make them any less obnoxious. But since they’re there, I wish they’d have different ads during each break, rather than, like, the same screechy Saturn commercial all three times.
Still. I was ready to heap scorn on this venture, but I can’t. Lame name aside, I like!
update: omg what is with those INTRUSIVE ads that appear above the player menu and COVER UP THE VIDEO??? BAD, hulu, BAD!!!
