Hulu released their latest round of private beta invitations and left one in our inbox as well. We’ve touched on the remarkable Hulu service before but, to recap, the service is a joint venture from NBC and Fox offering free streaming versions of your favorite new and old TV shows…and even a few movies.
You can already find most of your favorite shows online just by going to the official site of the network on which the show airs. (i.e., head over to NBC.com for new episodes of The Office or FOX.com for The Simpsons.) However, this marks the first time (to our recollection) that two major networks have joined forces to present their own content in one, easy-to-navigate location.
The design is beautiful in its’ simplicity and is brilliantly clean and intuitive:
Most shows available on the site offer at least one full season of content (Arrested Development, anyone?) in addition to select clips ranging from a few seconds to a several minutes in length.
Once you’ve discovered your favorite shows and/or clips, you can add them to a playlist which can be saved for later viewings. In addition, you can even provide people with the option to subscribe to your playlist(s) via an automatically updated RSS feed. (Example.)
Despite whether you choose to watch just a clip or a full show, you have a plethora of options for viewing and sharing. Pause the clip and, to the left, you can choose to view the clip in full-screen mode, as a pop-out in a sized browser window or just have Hulu dim the screen around the content. (Unlike other online content providers, this feature just dims the area inside the browser – not your entire screen. The latter would be a nice option and I’ll definitely be making the recommendation.)
Sharing your favorite clip and/or episode couldn’t be easier. As you can see below, you can choose to either embed the content in your own page or E-mail it to friends/family. You even have the option to customize the clip using a slider bar:
One additional note: content from NBC and Fox isn’t the only content available. You’ll find episodes and clips from shows on a variety of different NBC/Fox-owned networks including F/X, MTV and Showtime are available amongst others. The site also appears to be experimenting with linking to content available from other networks as well. A search for "arrested development" had many results including two items from ABC.
These turned out to be two clips from The View available at ABC.com but, if Hulu is a success, ABC, CBS and others might just begin to add their own content to Hulu’s site as well; thus leaving you with a one-stop-shop for all of your favorite shows.
The site is ad-supported and you’ll find small banner ads scattered throughout the site (one per page on average) in addition to 30-second spots during each piece of content. The convenience and options are amazing and are the best I’ve seen to date. If you happened to be the recipient of an invitation, let us know what you think.
