Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Sunday, October 28, 2007 at 9:00 PM PT

 

Hulu Debuts to Meet Foes and Find Friends

The long-awaited and much-derided NBC (GE) and News Corp (NWS) joint venture Hulu will make a somewhat public debut this week, opening up a private beta tonight of its web video service and initiating distribution of its movies, TV shows, and mashups on AOL (TWX), Comcast (CMCSA), MSN (MSFT), MySpace, and Yahoo (YHOO). And while it may not live up to its billing as a “YouTube killer,” Hulu is as different as a web video service could possibly be from the market leader.

After a series of pushed back launch dates, Hulu is crossing the starting line before the end of its promised deadline of October of 2007. The company also cut some last-minute deals over the weekend, adding Sony television shows only at Hulu.com and MGM TV shows and movies throughout its distribution network.

Hulu has a number of weaknesses. First of all, it is only offering web-based advertising-supported streaming. Its co-founder, NBC, is actually gearing up to offer an ad-supported video download service of its own called NBC Direct this fall. It’s also shunning content that’s not from big media as well as significant opportunities for viewers to participate (the best we get is thumbs up versus thumbs down, written reviews, and playlists).

However, Hulu has a great library of old and new content presented in what seemed to be, in a WebEX demo, an unencumbered and easy-to-use interface. Best of all, viewers are given the tools to embed full-length episodes and movies wherever they want around the web. Click here for the full list (well, mostly full, it was sent prior to Sony and MGM joining). Offerings include full episodes (including archives) from programs such as Battlestar Galactica, Hill Street Blues, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. New shows are added at midnight Hawaii time on the day after they air.hulu_player_page1.jpg

There are also a very small number of movies available, including The Blues Brothers, Sideways, and The Breakfast Club — but no Borat and Little Miss Sunshine as initially promised. And as a weak acknowledgment of the flexibility and creativity of online content, Hulu has enlisted film school students to edit together mashups of its content; one featured clip combines various times Homer Simpson has said “D’oh.”

Ad units we saw during a demo included 5-second prerolls, banners, overlays, and 30-second midroll ads. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said Hulu would use 25 percent as much advertising as broadcast norms, and promised it wouldn’t employ the annoying trick of jamming up commercial volume to get us to pay attention. For distribution partners such as Comcast, Yahoo, and AOL, Hulu has remade its Flash player to look like theirs. Hulu serves advertising in and around a video and shares revenue with content providers, Hulu, and distribution partners in that order (here’s what sounds like a reasonable description of the breakdown).

Hulu, which has $100 million in funding from Providence Equity Partners, will let in thousands of private beta testers this week, and tens of thousands each week thereafter, said Kilar. Beta testers will not be given additional invites; the way to register is through the official Hulu site. However, viewers will be able to find much of the content on distribution partner sites starting this week. In a “few months” Kilar said the beta would be fully open to the public.

So what should we think of Hulu? It’s not really a media company. It’s more a technology company with crazy parents and an unwieldy amount of cash.

hulu_video_player_share.jpgKilar, true to his roots in the tech industry at Amazon.com (AMZN), likes most of all to talk about the web site’s clarity and lack of clutter. Indeed, the service’s most innovative feature allows users to email and embed anything from a full episode or movie, as mentioned above, to a single shot or scene, via a nice little slider interface (click on the thumbnail at left for a screenshot).

But Hulu can’t avoid the trappings of big media. The company is tied up in a contradictory situation, where it’s chartered to have web-wide distribution while trying to maintain tight control over the user experience wherever it goes. Kilar declined to comment on NBC content being pulled from YouTube in advance of the Hulu launch. “It’s up to NBC how they manage their intellectual property,” he said.

And that really cuts to the heart of the matter: Hulu is a web service with privileged access to content provided by its creators, but it doesn’t have access to many of the important decisions affecting it. Long before the project had a name or a CEO, “NewSite” had both hype and haters. It may be a tad late to the party, but now Hulu will finally get to have users of its own decide for themselves whether it’s worthwhile. For its own sake, we hope Hulu is generous with those beta invites.

Previous coverage of Hulu:

Big Media vs YouTube & Google: Smart or Not. NBC confirms pulling YouTube content for Hulu No more NBC shows on iTunes Mad Money & Battle For The 10th Spot NewCo now has new CEO Is NewCo really worth a billion dollars? NewCo: Nuts & Bolts from an Insider.

Update: Commenters indicate that they are unable to access the site’s content, which is available on AOL already, outside the United States. We got our invite while we were sleeping so we’ll get you a full review later today.

Update 2: Screenshots and notes from our Hulu walkthrough here.

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Topic: Online Video

Comments (11)

  • I think comparing Hulu to Youtube is the same as comparing Facebook to MySpace – companies that may seem similar on the surface but really are different, even though there is competing overlap.

    Apple is notorious for controlling user experience – just look at the iPhone – I think Hulu is right to follow and make sure that their brand is properly represented wherever their content goes.

    Lastly, Hulu’s success does not hinge on becoming more popular than Youtube, it just needs to be highly profitable (wouldn’t hurt to be more profitable than Youtube though).

    My two cents.

    David Mullings — 11:01 PM on October 28, 2007 Reply

  • “Web-wide distribution”? you mean as in ‘us-american web’, right?
    I smell IP-filters.
    It’d be awesome if it would be otherwise but I highly doubt that we who are outside of the US will be able to see much if anything on hulu. or am I wrong on this on? (which, again, would be awesome here)

    marcel weiss — 3:33 AM on October 29, 2007 Reply

  • So, the content will be available for free, supported by overlay-ads? If this is the case, I wish they would just distribute it using a public BitTorrent-tracker the way Mark Pesce describes in his “Piracy is good”-talk: http://tinyurl.com/2jz6vt

    If the shows were made available this way in a standardized format (such as MPEG-4 Part 2 or H.264), and in decent quality, I might actually watch it. The shows would of course be available from anywhere in the world at the same time, but would that really be such a bad thing?

    This Flash-nonsense will never appeal to me. It is annoying and proprietary filth. And Flash is not available for my *BSD- or Solaris-computers.

    Torgrim — 4:35 AM on October 29, 2007 Reply

  • Found another cool feature from HULU if you find a Embed you can go to the Menu and select a related video you can watch more full shows and possibly navigate to your favorite shows …Who needs Invites when its this simple

    I Just embeded a 24 episode with a Tumblr account and don’t have a HULU account yet .make sure you click the Menu to find more shows .

    http://watchhulu.tumblr.com/post/17661225

    Matt_ — 7:50 AM on October 29, 2007 Reply

  • Why do they use flash? I haven’t found an answer to that yet. It baffles me that everybody uses flash to stream movies. Flash is a terrible resource hog. The best alternative is divx. Has anyone ever seen the videos on stage6 or on Joox? They are impecable for streams! But hey, who am I to judge, I didn’t cut a deal with Adobe, nor did I cut a deal with Divx.

    Wiggie — 9:24 AM on October 29, 2007 Reply

  • Liz you need another coffee
    HULU on AOL is not availible outside the US or any HULU content for tha t Matter .

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/29/more-hulu-goodness-embeded-video/

    Hope this changes once the networks and HULU realize they can monetize what is now casual piracy .

    Matt_ — 9:50 AM on October 29, 2007 Reply

  • Matt I agree with you about the coffee, but I think that’s exactly what I said.

    Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 11:14 AM on October 29, 2007 Reply

  • Well, let’s see, NBC is the third rated network and Fox is rated fourth. Most people watch something else when these shows air on broadcast TV so I doubt seriously that this Hulu lasts for very long.

    dualsub — 8:24 PM on October 29, 2007 Reply

  • hulu is off to a great start with great tv shows, popular video clips and movies, both current and old. other great professional video websites are http://www.zoogatv.com and http://www.tidaltv.com. let’s see how these portals grow their audience and build on the wave for free professional online video content.

    anthony — 9:36 AM on July 31, 2008 Reply

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