Hey, what’s that down below? Is that…the pilot for Buffy the Vampire Slayer? The whole friggin’ thing?
Why, yes it is. Welcome to Hulu.com, the reason why NBC/Universal pulled out of their deal with iTunes. This new video hub is owned by NBC/Universal and News Corp and offers content from those companies’ outlets (Fox, FX, NBC, USA, Sci-Fi, etc.) Even though it’s still in beta, while the tech-wizards work out the kinks, Hulu is what we call a game-changer for two reasons:
1) The quality is phenomenal. No more sketchy, viewed-through-gauze YouTube clips. While it’s not quite HD, the image looks far better than the iTunes equivalent. (And it’s a lot smoother than NBC.com’s episode hub.)
2) You can embed the videos. Whole episodes. Near as I can tell, if you wanted to put the whole first season of 30 Rock (or Bionic Woman or Hill Street Blues) on your blog, you could. No charge, no repercussions. It reminds me of the moment when e-mail — which the veterans among us can remember was something you paid for — became free: suddenly, the information axis shifted.
What will this mean in the long run? It’s a little too early to tell. But, for now, it’s a shiny new toy that those of us in the PopWatch HQ will be playing with all month.
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Buffy rules, best show ever.
Damn… not quite as evolutionary as sliced bread, but comparable to the corkscrew…
This isn’t the “original” pilot. The first pilot had a different actress playing Willow.
Will this site be available to people from countries outside the US? It’s annoying when I miss an episode of a show I love, but can’t watch it on their official sites because I live in Canada.
…and like TV in iTunes, not available in Canada. Just great.
Why is it never available in Canada?? Why????????
Canadians get healthcare. We get TV on the internet. Seems like a fair trade.
Thanks so much NBC and Fox for letting Canada in on this deal…. You know, technically, we’re Americans too!
So they’ll let you share copyrighted material on your blog, but not copy it to your iPod? It’s great that it’s free, but if I’m at home I watch TV on my TV. The great thing about iTunes for me is the portability. Though now that it’s free, does that mean it’s okay to find other, um, free sources for this stuff?
Canadians can get it for free too as soon as we can get Trailer Park Boys down here and that’s final. LOL
So let me get this straight…you used to have to PAY for email?!
It’s locking up the page and not letting the rest of the blog posts load, just keeps “transferring thumbnails from hulu.” Does anyone really expect NBC to deliver a good online product? I don’t see it happening.
I hope this crap is better than their nbc.com streams which stop and start like an old beater with funky valves.
Canadians blame your government.
Canada has cultural rules related to TV programming, It stem back with Canada had a county TV station and CMT in the USA wanted to be on Rogers cable. In addition CBC and others constant complaining about the three majors networks (at the time) stealing their audiences. This actually lead to a number of shows being made in Vancouver (think X-files) so they could be shown in Canada.
Now to have access in Canada the program needs to be purchased by a Canadian provider (Rogers, CBC, CTV, etc). While this only pertains to USA shows (Not BBC or JPN) is does limit iTunes and hulu.
Hulu when it works right is by far the best for viewing but when it does not, it is a waste of bandwidth and time. It is still in beta and probably will be for 2-3 more months so any review that praises or condemns its quality, is premature.
When did you ever have to pay for email?
Yeah, but when you try to use hulu it send you an email saying:
You have successfully submitted for inclusion on the Hulu private beta invite list.
We will send an invitation as soon as we are ready for you!
Thank you,
Team Hulu
I have to wait to be invited?!
yeah canada gets healthcare where their residents come to the US to have procedures done. but this hulu thing…it seems like there has to be a catch somewhere. hmm. otherwise, looks pretty cool.
nbc.com is fantastic for viewing shoes. its called dsl, verizon offers it, look into it
shows, damn. my wit is defeated by my poor typing.
sadness
Not to criticize my favorite magazine (other than my own!), but your comment that the Hulu images are “far better than the iTunes equivalent” is completely wrong. Not only does the iTunes image of your sample Buffy episode look — and sound! — far better than the Hulu equivalent at the same sizes, but the iTunes episode is actually 640 x 480, making it much higher resolution than Hulu’s version.
We can argue free-with-ads on Hulu and pay-but-no-ads on iTunes for a long time, but your statement that Hulu’s video is better than iTunes is 100% false, proven using your very own sample file.
It’s not available in Canada because the rights are not cleared. This takes an incredible amount of work by lawyers and producers who all have to agree on how the money gets split. Canada is smaller than the state of California so it’s not a priority for Apple over say the UK. Also, Hollywood currently makes a lot of money selling programs to Canadian networks, so of course they want to keep their customers happy. There’s no mystery or conspiracy to what is or isn’t happening in Canada, just a lot of work to sort out the rights.
if this is any indication of what hulu is, I am incredibly dissapointed. After catching up on House via Fox.com’s own episode viewer, this is just plain not as good. The small resolution and the inability to increase the window size is a turn off. I refuse to pay for episodes, even at $1.99 a pop. If this is the available quality, more people will either simply not watch episodes or will turn towards piracy.
I don’t remember having to pay for email, but I do remember in the early 90s having to get approval from my (huge, Fortune 500) company to get “email privileges”.
Why doesn’t the menu go to other Buffy episodes? It makes no sense. You can’t even tell what show the icons are for. You have to click on it to find out what it is.
This is a joke, right? Are you really claiming that this is higher resolution than the itunes version? That is like claiming that 6 is now bigger than 5! This from the same PR world that tries to claim that DRM is great for the consumer.
Not even the related videos they show when you reach the end of a clip are related to each other. Are they going to fix this when it comes out of beta?
First allow me to say. Has the write been smoking crack. 1.The image quaility is no where near the iTunes download
2. I will not sit in front of my cpu for a half or hour long show. If I can’t view it on my HD TV screw it.
From the slant of this article NBC or Fox wrote this article.
Marc, you are an idiot. As another writer put it…
“I understand that too much TV can rot your brain, but honestly, in who’s universe is Flash video at a resolution of around 384 x 286 “far better” than the iTunes Store’s 640 x 480 H.264 standard?”
BOO! for US (i assume, as i am not there at the moment) use only…
when is the youtubehulu user going up?
The quality is good, the layout nicely uncluttered, but the quintessential problem with it is that the companies decide the content, not the fans. What if I don’t want a whole episode of 30 Rock? What if I just want a clip? And what if I want to dictate how big that clip is and not leave it up to NBC? That’s one of the keys to YouTube — what has made it so subversive. The viewers dictate the content, not the networks.