Once upon a time if you had a hankering for watching some old SNL skit, an old episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, or maybe last week’s Family Guy, your choices were limited… Maybe for the older stuff, you could go to the local video store and hope the TV section had what you wanted – of course you’re out of luck for anything that just aired. Or maybe you could buy a boxed DVD set – if you can find it, and if you really want to fork out that kind of money for essentially just one show. Or you possibly could root around one of the paid content Internet sites such as Apple’s iTunes or Amazon’s Unbox to see if it is being offered … for a price. Perhaps you checked out YouTube to see if maybe, hope against hope, someone posted that show that you’re hunting for, albeit it, in grainy low quality – and at only 10 minutes a shot. Some may even go as far as to dig up a torrent seed or visit pirate websites and obtain what they want by less than legal means – something we certainly discourage! Then along comes Hulu and everything changes.


Hulu is a joint venture spearheaded by NBC and FOX that sought to change the Internet culture by offering fast, free, and legal TV shows, movies, sports and news to the Internet world. All the shows are supported via 15 or 30 second innovative commercials inserted in the normal commercial time slots and are shown in a high quality streaming video using the standard Adobe Flash Player. The current library of TV shows, movies and clips is absolutely staggering. From classics like Adam 12 to new shows like The Office – Hulu offers a large array of shows and clips! Because NBC and FOX also own a wide variety of cable channels, many of those shows are also available through Hulu as well.


Hulu officially launched to the public on March 12, 2008 thus, as with all new web sites, the content and features may change. Some of the cool features currently available include embedding a video directly on your own website or blog,
e-mailing a link to a friend, and “sharing” the video to your personal MySpace or Facebook page. Unlike some other free content sites, (such as joost.com - which requires a downloaded player), Hulu simply relies on the latest version of standard Adobe Flash Player to stream videos right to you. The well thought-out player layout on Hulu also offers such amenities as full screen mode, episode detail, a neat “dim lights” mode, and a really cool stand-alone pop-out feature. Another really nice feature on Hulu.com is the video content search – not only will it check out its own site, but if it doesn’t find it, it’ll go out and search other (legal) sites for what you want.


While you can easily go to Hulu.com and start watching a show or clip in a matter of seconds, there are some tips and tricks to keep in mind. One tip is that while most of the shows can be watched without creating a user account, for some of the shows (R rated movies for example) and features (like sending a video link via e-mail), you will need to create a free user account and log in. Another tip is that on many first run shows, the episodes tend to lag about a week behind air date, and only a limited number of episodes are up at any one time. For example, on some shows, only the last three aired episodes are shown full length, so you may want to plan your viewing accordingly. One cool trick is to watch all the commercials beforehand (since the timeline shows where the commercial interrupts are), thus fulfilling the ad time upfront and then go back and watch the entire episode without commercial interruptions. Some caveats to look out for are some of the older TV shows usually include the first and sometimes also the second season only, but may not include the “origin” (first one or two) episodes. In addition, content cannot be downloaded to your computer to be watched later – though many of the shows do provide links to buy them electronically. One last thing to remember is that much of the content is also restricted to the United States only due to international agreements.


Since its official public launch just a few months ago, Hulu has taken the Internet world by storm and shows no letup. If you’re a TV fan, movie enthusiast, a sports junkie or just someone who’s a bit nostalgic, Hulu is certainly worth a look. Always adding new shows and constantly updating to newer and more innovative features, Hulu is certainly a place to check out your favorites online – fast, free and legal!

Tags: Geeks Tech Tip TV HD Video

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