Hulu: it's good stuff.
Hulu has opened up for me a world of television I never had time for before, even when I had Tivo. With Tivo, I was constantly monitoring its hard drive to make sure I didn't hit capacity (80 hour drive, my ass--that would be 80 hours at the lowest possible quality level, people, which produced video so fuzzy I may have had better luck with a bloody antenna, and during a blizzard), so more often than not I declined to put shows on season pass unless I really, truly enjoyed them. I missed out on several programs of decent quality merely because they were on at the same time as something else the Tivo was already recording. There was also the issue of what would be least embarrassing to display on the Tivo queue, since at the time I had three roommates to pass judgement over what I watched. To top it all off, the whole reason I had Tivo in the first place was because I was in college; in between classes, work, pep band, and social obligations, there was no time to watch television except at three in the morning.
Fast forward to today: no Tivo. (It seemed silly to pay for the service now that I no longer have cable, either.) I first heard of Hulu's existence a few months ago, but at its launch there wasn't much of interest to watch on it. The full episode libraries were spotty at best, and more importantly, the shows I hadn't seen before were fairly consistently missing the early episodes I needed to watch. (It is a huge pet peeve of mine to not watch shows from the very first episode. If I can pick up a show at any point, then it likely does not have the kind of character development and plot sophistication required to maintain my affections. Snobbish? Perhaps. I really don't care.)
Well, after a few short months, Hulu has transformed itself into a site actually worthy of visiting on a daily basis. Slowly but surely, earlier seasons of shows have started popping up, and I've gotten into some great new-to-me shows. The commercials are sparse and far shorter in duration than those on regular television. Pulling up a program in full screen on the teleputer--the subterranean enclave's television is wired to a souped-up Mac Mini, which is in turn networked to our other computers--is just like watching the real deal. What's not to love?
Oh, and this ol' blogger isn't the only one taking notice: tonight, the interwebs are abuzz with the
news that NBC will be premiering several shows from its Fall lineup a week early on Hulu, which provides even more incentive to stay cable-free. Perhaps the broadcast network executives finally figured out how to account for that mysterious
internet money we heard so much about during the WGA strike last year? It's possible that this Fall lineup shift was the plan all along, given that Hulu was created by the minds over at NBC Universal; all the same, Hulu's success represents a huge step forward in realizing the internet's potential to provide a cultural experience to be shared and enjoyed by all. That's pretty damn cool.
