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Hulu is an online video streaming service that streams both movies and television programs for free to your pc. The content on this service is played right in your web browser and doesn’t require any additional software, unlike some of the other sites out there.

The Hulu site is in the vanguard of the future of entertainment, where the traditional cable/broadcast model that we are all so familiar with will be more or less done away with by technology. Hulu is just the first of what will eventually become a flood of websites offering video entertainment on demand, whenever and where ever someone would want. If for no other reason, it is worth checking out, just to see what the future may hold for this technology.

Alot of the content on Hulu comes from NBC, including some of the major NBC shows. In addition to NBC, Hulu has agreements with Fox, Warner Brothers, USA network, Sony, Universal, MGM, and some selected sports programming including the NBA and NHL.  In addition to television programming, Hulu has recently been branching out to show more movies – although a good majority of the movies available are older, they still have a pretty good variety to choose from. 

The interface to use the service is easy to navigate and clean. The picture quality was, in all my testing, always of good quality. Video is delivered in the now standard Adobe Flash Codec. Of course quality will depend quite a bit on your web connection, and broadband is most definitely recommended for this site. On slower web connections there will be some buffering of the service (pauses) while the video loads, but I didn’t encounter any of this during my testing. Operation of the service is very similar to You-Tube, and at least to me, it had a very similar feel – although with much better resolution.

The only downside that I have been able to find with this service is that it is ad supported. The programs seem to be interrupted at various times to show a few multi-second advertisements. While I don’t really mind it, as it is very similar to the way traditional TV works, I do find ads distracting. It could well be that in the future they may offer a paid subscription which would dispense with the ads, and I think that would be a welcome change if you plan to use the site heavily.

Overall I found the Hulu service to be worthwhile to check out, especially in light of the cost. While this service won’t yet replace your cable and DVD player, it might become a welcome addition to the entertainment offerings in your home.