When NBC Universal and News Corp announced that they were teaming up back in March, most people assumed that they were doing so to take on YouTube by launching a video sharing site. As it turns out, they had no intention of competing with YouTube and instead had their eyes set on creating a place where people would be able to view premium video content online. Eventually they named the service Hulu, and just yesterday they took the first step necessary to bring it out to the public by launching a private beta. All it takes is an email address, and you can sign up to get an invite.
Hulu has a lot going for them, especially when you take into consideration the fact that they’ve teamed with AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo who will eventually have the premium content available on their sites as well with their own customized video player. They also own the content that will be available which is another huge advantage. When you take a look at the line-up of shows that they’ll be offering, the service is even more impressive with shows like:
- Prison Break
- House
- Bones
- Heroes
- Scrubs
- 24
- My Name is Earl
- and more…
So with a great list of shows in high quality and what appears to be a good interface, is there anything that could prevent Hulu from being a success? NewTeeVee points out a few of their weaknesses - among them are their resistance to anything other than big media shows, and the lack of some way to get viewers to participate in the experience like writing a review for an episode. Another big weakness is that all of the content is ad-supported, they don’t offer an alternative like a monthly subscription to view shows ad-free.
Certainly they’ve got weaknesses, but their strong points are just that, strong. Not only do they have the TV shows, but they also have videos and the option for users to email or even embed the content to share with others. This week they’ll be letting in thousands of beta testers to try it out with even more welcomed in each week after. TV programming on the web is here, and I think it’s here to stay. I’ve submitted my email address to request an invite, and now I can’t wait to try it out. It certainly sounds impressive but leaves me wondering, will Hulu will put a dent in Joost’s user-base?
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Tags: Web Sites, AOL, Comcast, Joost, MySpace, Videos, Yahoo, YouTube
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I’m really looking forward to this breaking out…I’ve wanted to get rid of my wildy expensive cable for a long time now, and this definitely could push me to do so.
If they corner Joost (that is, they refuse to sign up anything with them), it sure could receive a beating. After all, most people watch those big shows and not the indies one. Probably Joost will have to focus on these ones at the expense of Miro, of course. I wonder what would be the impact on BitTorrent downloading.
At least I’d be able to watch Bones legally and without waiting one year for it to be dubbed
I think between the launch of Hulu (for the official TV clips) and the gorgeous Vimeo HD for the quality user-gen stuff, youtube AND joost are in for some trouble…
US only?
Oh, come on….
So far it looks to me like the Joost slayer. Why? 24. tv-links.co.uk was recently shut down, ending an excellent site for streaming 24. People in need could turn to Hulu, for probably higher quality video w/out the chinese subtitles and w/out even breaking the law. House is a good show too. Basically, I think they’re better because they have shows from Fox.
Oh, hey, I wonder if they’ll have American Idol?
I’ve submitted my email to try to get in the bets.
I have never even used Joost aside from the few articles we’ve written about it. And looking at the programming lineup I would say that they definitely have them beat. This is going to be HUGE ssuming they will be able to meet the bandwidth demands.
Wuhu, I got the invite! I like that there’s no software to download, and there’s far better programming. A lot of shows only have a few episodes, but they’ll probably add more over time. Buffer speed seemed pretty good. If I ever want to watch TV online, Hulu will definitely be my first destination.
The fact the Hulu doesn’t need software is definitely in it’s favor. They both have a different array of shows so I don’t see why they won’t both do pretty well. One cool thing about Joost is that it’s starting to get quite a few older shows available to watch anytime. For those who aren’t so much into the modern shows I suspect Joost will really suite them best. But they both have plenty of new stuff too.