Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 3:00 AM PT

Hulu Walkthrough: Screenshots and Notes

You may have read our take on the Hulu launch, and you can see parts of the service for yourself at partner sites like AOL Video (TWX) and Comcast’s Fancast (CMCSA).

However, since Hulu isn’t fulfilling all requests for beta invites, and is restricted to the U.S., much of the service is behind closed doors. For all you inquiring minds, I played around on the site in the 24 hours or so since getting my invite, took screenshots, and jotted down some notes.

The site registration form asks for quite a bit of personal information:

The content selection is not as big as we’d hoped, with only five episodes available of current shows and no archives for them. Not quite enough library to really get lost in:

Even off-the-air shows, which set Hulu apart from other offerings, have slim pickings:

When a preroll ad plays, the rest of the options disappear. Then, as the videos played, I saw a mix of banner and video ads for Cisco, esurance, AXE, Nissan, and Chevrolet, among others:

I liked that a stream resumed where I left off, even when I came back to the site later in the day:

It’s satisfying to embed the full-length movie The Breakfast Club, as I did in our video bar at the top of NewTeeVee, as well as here:

However, our favorite feature after an official Hulu demo — a simple slider-based editing tool for creating shareable chunks of movies and TV shows — didn’t seem as cool when we played with it ourselves. The interface is frustrating because it doesn’t give enough feedback to make clipping accurate:

Lastly, though I can’t really show this through a small screenshot, full-screen streaming was actually pretty pixelated, and choppy at times.

Anyone else out there playing with Hulu? What’s your take?

Sphere Tweet This

Topic: Startups

Comments (9)

Finally, confirmation of full screen. Liz, is the full screen feature better or worse than the networks websites?

Coffee With Ian — 4:10 AM on October 30, 2007 Reply
pixelation on the full screen might be because you were on a slow broadband connection, that is mostly what i experienced. at home nice quality, which dropped at starbucks

Om Malik, NewTeeVee — 7:35 AM on October 30, 2007 Reply
Ive only Played with the embeds but they seem pretty easy to viewbut Im hoping that Joost will become a browser plugin soon and cuts a deal with HULU or NBC/FOX very soon

OM and Liz could you work your usual magic and get a few invites for us NewTeeVee readers ……

Matt_ — 9:08 AM on October 30, 2007 Reply
The fullscreen functionality is pretty standard for the JW, Blip and YouTube players. Looks better than YouTube bitrate, though, certainly.

Jackson West — 11:02 AM on October 30, 2007 Reply
I would say the full screen quality seemed worse than the networks’ websites, but that might have just been my internet connection.

Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 11:59 AM on October 30, 2007 Reply
How can i register for HULU.com Website

pd — 1:14 PM on March 11, 2008 Reply
Anyone know how I can get to watch stuff off Hulu from the UK?

Srin — 2:21 PM on March 27, 2008 Reply
hello every one is the any why that I can watch hulu video in the UK ??

MEHBUB — 6:03 PM on November 8, 2008 Reply
hello every one is the any why that I can watch hulu video in the UK ?? MY EMAIL is jalil_mehbub@hotmail.com

MEHBUB — 6:05 PM on November 8, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (5)

[...] Hulu Now The good folks over at BuzzFeed have pointed out a backdoor way to watch the new Hulu video service — even if you don’t have a beta [...]

A Sneaky Way to Watch Hulu Now « NewTeeVee — 3:57 PM on October 30, 2007
[...] UK Broadcasters Unite for “Kangaroo” Three of the UK’s biggest broadcasters, BBC, C4 and ITV, are banding together to create an online on demand entertainment service. The joint service, which has been given the working title “Kangaroo,” will offer more than ten thousand hours of the three broadcasters’ current and past programming. Think of it as the UK’s answer to Hulu. [...]

UK Broadcasters Unite for “Kangaroo… — 9:35 AM on November 27, 2007
[...] vormt. (Momenteel nog in beta, maar een login kan binnen een dag worden aangevraagd, bekijk deze site voor meer [...]

Voorbij web 2.0 design: 3 tips - Frankwatching — 10:02 PM on February 4, 2008
[...] disappointed to find few new releases and a bunch of the same content I’m already watching via Hulu. By the way, if Roku could make it easy for me to port my Hulu content to my TV, I’d buy it [...]

Netflix Set-Top Boxes to be Brought to You… — 9:06 PM on May 19, 2008
[...] of Online Streaming We noticed this week that an embedded version of The Breakfast Club in an early post of ours about Hulu had gone missing. The embed (see screenshot below) displays a message saying to [...]

Hulu’s Dead Embeds: The Perils of Online… — 9:00 PM on May 22, 2008