Hulu Logo
Hulu is the online hub where viewers can watch streaming video of favorite TV. shows, movies and clips for free on-demand. Currently Hulu is only available in the U.S. but offers videos from close to 150 leading content companies such as FOX, NBC, Comedy Central and Lionsgate. Since its inception the groundbreaking platform for web viewing has picked up numerous awards, some of these include:
- Fast Company’s “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies”
- BusinessWeek’s “ Best New Way to Watch TV”
- AdWeek’s “Top Media & Marketing Innovations 2008”
- ReadWriteWeb’s “Top 10 Digital Lifestyle Products 2008”
Screenshot of Hulu TV homepage
Hulu’s is being praised by enterprises left and right but it is not surprising after one visits the site. There is a large and diversified selection of video content from documentary to fitness to news found on Hulu. The site even has a catalog of older shows with full length episodes (some of which that do not air anymore), one of my personal favs, Married with Children can be found here. Viewers as subjected to some advertising (hey guys if you’re not paying for content who do you think is) but it is less than what is found on regular television. Advertising usually amounts to 25 percent of the running time of the programming it is shown in conjunction with. I can live with this especially if you compare this to regular TV. programs which have ads comprising up to 50 percent of its run time. Hulu is also easy to navigate due to its simple interface.
Hulu's channels page
I could’ve browsed through the video catalog which is divided into categories such as channels, popular shows, popular clips, popular episodes or just typed in what I was looking for since I knew exactly what I wanted (in this case it was Married with Children).
Viewers also get the option to control how they watch their selected content, whether it is in a separate pop window or with the “lower the lights” function that dims the screen around the window pane. All around I think Hulu is a site that everyone should check out. There are a lot of neat features and a gang of content sure to fit anybody’s taste. It is definitely a must watch, especially for those of us that complain nothing is on TV.
Click here to see TopTenReviews Ratings of internet TV sites for 2009.
