Having previously only been available through beta invites, hulu.com has now launched their full scale operations on the world wide interweb. The site is a joint venture where NBC Universal and News Corporation teamed up to put 400 different TV shows and full length movies online, and it's completely FREE!
The content consists of tv shows from Fox, NBC, and most larger cable channels including Bravo, E!, FX, SciFi and more. The movies are made available through the catalogues of Fox, Universal, Sony and MGM. The site also features a bunch of web exclusive content from TV shows.
Highlights are 30Rock, Firefly, NipTuck, The Office, Outer Limits, Simpsons, Family Guy, Battlestar Galactica (and BG classic),Buffy, Andy Barker P.I.... yeah, you get the drift, if it's good and it's on tv, chances are it is - or will soon be made available on hulu.
Flash heavy crap interfaces with crap video quality you might think, well not in this case. Hulu relies on a very sparse, yet well laid out interface that makes it a dream to navigate, plus the video format is very crisp for an on-line streaming site (520 x 295 px), nicely integrated plus the streaming is FAST, Tech crunch reports it's streamed at 480Kbps or 700Kbps, i.e. enough to support jerk-free video most of the time.
The only downside that I see is that there is no integration with stuff like windows media center for easy use with your tv and as of yet is that the content is not downloadable, but hey, that's what torrents are for.
Well, whats the catch then? Yes, there is one catch, the hulu service is currently only available to US residents and blocks all IP addresses not originating in the US. Bummer you say, well actually not, just use a US proxy that assigns your computer with a "virtual" US IP address. Normaly used for surfing the web anonymously, hiding your private information they also work like a charm for this.
The problem with these kind of services generally is that if they are free service like for instance www.anonymouse.ws, your connection speed will suffer greatly (not a very good thing when streaming video, plus the integration with flash and other add on software usually works 'so-so' to put it mildly.. On the other hand you have some really good services that you have to pay for, here of course the problem being that you actually have to pay for it..
Searching for Proxy services, the best one I found was Hotspot Shield from Anchor Free, normally used for protecting you by setting up a VPN while using a wireless public router. Hotspot Shield assigns your computer a new virtual IP address (originating in the US) and since hulu now assumes you are in the US gives you full, unadulterated access to all of the videos.
The downside with hotspot shield is that it is a downloadable program and it makes you have to sit though random banner ads at the top of your browser window, but thats not really a problem and easily fixed by selectiong fullscreen on hulu.. It's also very easy to turn off when using any other service than hulu.
I've also tried out anchor free watching full episode on Fox's video solution, "Fox on demand" and "NBC Direct", but both with no luck as the services requires additional software such as a downloadable stand-alone player..
Tested out on a pretty old Dell comp running XP pro/IE7, but should work on vista and Mac also..
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