just an asterisk

I’m going to make a few assumptions – I assume that you are no longer using VHS tapes.  I’ll assume that your children don’t play an Atari console with fake wood paneling.  Moreover, I’m going to take it for granted that you’ve probably purchased one of these “cellular” phones.  Come on, you’ve evolved.  Admit it.    Now it’s time to take the next step – online video is waiting for you and it’s very, very good.

Hulu.com should be your first stop in breaking the pull of your television.  According to Wikipedia, NBC and New Corp (FOX) got together in April 2007 to put programming for free on the web.  The only catch?  You have to watch one 15 second commercial where you’d normally watch four.  The ads are snappy, short and hardly break the rhythm of the excellent shows that you’d normally have to record.  As everything is available immediately after its normal show time, it’s like have a video recorder that reads your mind.  

Users can search for older episodes/movies using a simple search field at the top of each page.  Filter results by Most Popular, Recently Added, Highest Rated, Release Date.  Cut down searches by programming type (All TV, All Movies, TV Clips, TV Full Episodes, Games, Movie Clips, Movie Trailers, Feature Films) and then narrow your options with a “channel” (Action and Adventure, Animation and Cartoons, Comedy etc…).  There is even closed captioning on some programming.

There are two features of Hulu that I find particularly brilliant:  subscriptions (you get email alerts whenever new shows are available) and queues (you can add episodes to a queue and watch several in a row).

The site is easy to use and intuitive.  In fact, it’s so simple that there’s nothing more that I can add.  Try it out!  I guarantee that while you won’t throw away your television, you may start to neglect it…

~ab

PS The next post will be longer (and drafted in Turkey but published from London).  More to come!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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