I got in to Hulu!

After I wrote my post on Hulu a few weeks ago, I decided to submit my name to be one of their beta testers. It's very easy to do; just go to the front page of their website and put your email address in the box. I'd heard there was a long, long wait to get selected, so I was very surprised to be selected so quickly. I used my work email address, hoping they would think I was some important university professor and give me a leg up, so maybe that helped.

At any rate, yesterday afternoon I went to the Hulu homepage and was able to log in for the first time. I discovered that the interface is very intuitive. You can look at the list of shows by channel, in alphabetical order, or by order of popularity. I first looked at the list of participating channels, since I'd never been able to find out exactly which ones were included, and I copied it down for you. Here it is: Bravo, E!, Fox, Fox Movie Channel (with original programming about movies, not the movies themselves), Fuel, FX, IGN, myNetworkTV, National Geographic, NBC, Oxygen, SciFi, Style, Sundance (the same deal as Fox Movie Channel), and USA. That makes 15, just like the original press releases said. However, there are only one or two shows available for some of the cable channels. I wonder if this will change eventually or if this is all they plan to offer. In addition, there are old shows from other networks that were produced by 20th Century Fox and MGM. And there is a rotating selection of movies from 20th Century Fox and Universal. (Right now they are Bulworth, Master and Commander, Sideways, Weekend at Bernie's, The Blues Brothers, Conan the Barbarian, The Jerk, and October Sky.)

Once you select a show, you're taken to a page for that show that shows available episodes, as well as providing a synopsis and cast listing. Right now only the first season of everything is available, but it looks like there will eventually be buttons at the top of the episode listing that let you switch to another season quickly. You can also subscribe to a show if you want to be notified every time new episodes are uploaded.

I decided, for the good of the team, to watch an episode of the Bob Newhart Show and see what it was like. I was very impressed with the player. It has a variety of controls, more than the typical web player. I'll admit I didn't look at all of them carefully, but I did notice one for brightness, which I've never seen anywhere before. There was also a button to watch something in full screen, and guess what, readers? It actually worked! Usually when watching something in full screen, it pops you back to the tiny view at each ad, and then you have to click on the full screen button again when the show comes back, and sometimes that doesn't even work for some reason. With the Hulu player, I actually got to sit back and watch the whole episode, even the ads, in full screen, without having to touch another button. This is wonderful.

Another great thing is the number of ads. There were 4 15-second ads (all of them the same one, actually), during the show. The first came after the opening credits. The second was around the 15 minute mark, and seemed to be right where an ad break was in the original show. The third was after the main story was over but before the "stinger," and the fourth was between the stinger and the closing credits. (That seemed a little odd, since the stinger was only about 30 seconds long, so it meant that two of the four ads came less than a minute apart!) All in all, though, having to watch a total of one minute of ads (and seamlessly,without the usual hassle of button pushing) seems like a very small price to pay for the privilege of watching this show.

For the purposes of experimentation, I decided to watch the next episodes of the show at MSN TV and AOL TV, so I could see if the Hulu player really is an advantage. The answer is "Yes, so much so that I couldn't actually bear to watch the show on either of those sites." It turns out that when you watch Hulu videos on other sites, you can't change the size of the screen. The MSN default screen is so tiny that I felt I was watching something in RealVideo circa 1998! The AOL screen was bigger, about the size of a standard YouTube window, so I guess I could have handled it if I had no choice, but knowing I could watch the same episode at Hulu in full screen made me click "stop" after about 30 seconds! Just to experiment, I tried watching other non-Hulu programming on each of the sites, and the full screen button was there and was working. I'm not sure if this is a bug or an intentional feature, but it's very annoying either way. Still, I guess Hulu has to find some way to drive users to their site.

At some point (maybe this weekend), I'll have to watch some longer programming on Hulu and see if that experience is as good. At this point, however, I'm going to have to say that I love Hulu and all that it offers me!