I received my Hulu beta invite a few days ago. Unfortunately for me, I was still in Japan. One of the annoying aspects of Hulu’s strategy is that they do not allow people to access the service from outside of the United States.
Well, I am now visiting the San Francisco Bay Area over winter break, and I decided to crank up Hulu… and… oh my science.
You know how a number of people have said that Hulu is going to bomb? People like Leo Laporte, Om Malik, and John C. Dvorak? Yeah, they were all WRONG. Of course we have to let Om off the hook since he recently offered to eat a crow in restitution for his horribly misjudgment of Hulu.
Hulu is the best thing to happen to Television since Tivo. Most of the best content on network television is already on Hulu, even stuff that is no longer broadcast. As I write this I am watching Firefly. Next, it is great quality. It does of course depend on your broadband connection, but Hulu has now set the bar so high that all other networks will have to do similar things in response.
Also, Hulu has a number of things that help out NBC and the other networks on the service, which will in turn be good for consumers. Hulu has a business model, it is advertising supported, so it wont be disappearing on us. Also, the fact that there is no middle man… meaning the local affiliates… will hopefully either have to sit though fewer commercials.
Now heres the part that will actually be better for us.
Nielsen Ratings are broken, we all know that. It always feels like the good shows get canceled, and the unpopular shows stay on the air.
Well, now the networks can truely keep ratings, so that they can give us what we really want.
Did I mention Hulu is free?
So your worried about bandwidth? Imagine how much bandwidth you can afford once you relocate your monthly expenses on cable or satalite television onto your broadband bill.
Maybe you can pick yourself up one of those new nifty Verizon fiber optic connections.
Hulu rules.
Here… I will embed the Firefly Pilot episode for you.
-The Digital Kitty
