I know it’s been out for a while (I think it went out to public beta like Octoberish 07), but I just recently discovered Hulu while looking for a Twilight Zone episode I like a lot. I was really pleased when I first found the episode on Hulu, littered among several other episodes for both The Twilight Zone and several other shows. In addition, it was available to watch the episodes directly in what appeared to be a well designed video player environment.

I was soon disappointed. There are several reasons why Hulu is as worthless as used toilet paper.

Firstly, is the infamous “Video not available in your country or region” message whose implication is relatively evident in its significance. I don’t totally appreciate why you would develop a service such as Hulu and then seemingly put in controls that confine viewing based on locale. I understand that it is most likely tailored around scrupulously following some network licensing agreements, but I would assume there would be a creative, legal way to work around those. I would be of the mindset that if Hulu was to actually have any sort of promise it would really attempt to become more region free.

Secondly, the fine developers responsible for Hulu’s creation were creative enough to implement the most advanced buffering system available (sarcasm). Instead of providing the faculties that most people are used to, where the video is paused and a more reasonable download buffer is acquired of the user preference, it seems to cap off the buffer when manually stopped at some undetermined time ceiling since it varies so heavily when trying to peg it down. Its streaming nature is useless, it is so stop and go that trying to practically view any video is hardly reasonable. It’s like going frame by frame. Beyond that, for some reason my data transfer rates from their servers were just plain unacceptable as well. For some reason one gets the feeling that as opposed to dumping project budget into the actual video service, they spent it on a flashy website (that is admittedly very nice looking with tasteful ad placement).

Hulu’s content is great, which is to be expected since the hosted videos tend to be network produced, with network dollars backing it, so comparing quality to other video services is impracticable. Regardless, the technology factors for displaying that content is utterly irreproachable and not usable IMHO.

Two thumbs down for you Hulu. For shame.

Article Or Research Filed Under General (Personal).

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2 Comments »

1. 

   Hi Adam, I work at Hulu and was sorry to hear about the difficulties you encountering trying to watch videos. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind contacting me so I could try and debug these streaming issues?

   Thanks,

   Eric

   Comment by Eric — May 16, 2008 @ 9:28 pm

2. 

   I’m in the US and was just tipped off about hulu from a friend. Unfortunately when I tried to view videos on the site they spent vastly more time buffering than actually playing. I have a “medium” speed internet connection (around 900kbps) which typically serves me quite well. I do NOT have any problems viewing youtube videos as I can allow them a few extra seconds to load before playing, with hulu this is not possible. Hulu’s content is accessed through streaming whereas youtube uses the progressive download technique. For users with very high speed connections I suppose streaming is fine but for me, and I can only assume many others, it is unwatchable. I am very frustrated with this situation and wish that hulu would switch to progressive download so that EVERYONE could use their service, not just those with the best connections. It makes no sense to intentionally choose a format that secludes many people when a format that doesn’t could just as easily be used. Of course this is just my opinion.

   Comment by Zman — December 25, 2008 @ 11:53 pm

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