Today marks the first day of Beta testing for the Hulu service.
We’ve been hard at work on a service that offers a great selection of television shows, clips, feature films and more that you can enjoy for free and on-demand. At Hulu, you’ll find current hit shows like The Office, Prison Break, The Simpsons, Heroes, and many more. You’ll also find a large number of classic television series, including Arrested Development, Miami Vice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The A-Team. We’re also going into beta with an initial selection of feature films that includes Conan the Barbarian, Sideways and The Blues Brothers.
Starting today, we are sending out invitations which will allow users to access the private beta at Hulu.com. If you haven’t signed up, you can do so by visiting Hulu.com. As well, this week we’ll start serving Hulu’s content lineup to our distribution partner websites, which include AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo.
The team here is excited to gather real user feedback. We’ve made it easy to leave comments and suggestions through a feedback form which can be found next to each video that is played on the site. We’re committed to making the service great, which means that we’ll be reading every piece of feedback and working hard to improve the service each day. You should expect to see us adding more content and more functionality throughout the private beta period and beyond.
Not everyone will receive an invitation to the private beta today, but we will be ramping up the number of invitations to the private beta each week. In the interim, we’ve captured a number of screen shots for those interested. Here’s Hulu’s homepage, which we just pushed live:
On behalf of the Hulu team, thank you for giving us the chance to present this service to you. To a person, this team is extremely passionate about fulfilling what we see as a big consumer need: to enable people to find and enjoy premium content when, where and how they want it. Great content needs to be that easy. Please know that this crew of technologists, user interface geeks, and all-around media junkies will not stop in our pursuit to provide you more and more premium entertainment to enjoy on your terms.
Thanks in advance for your feedback…
Jason Kilar ()
CEO, Hulu
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Although I am mightily sympathetic to the Writers and their collective goals, I am sure that the industry will iron out the kinks and everything will be peachy in a bit. However this is prime time to roll out HULU.
HULU should not just be a headline word on digg once per month or the subject of an avid TV enthusiasts blog. It should be on my nightly news. “As the strike continues, TV veiwers can find relief in TV archive service HULU where many episodes are available on-demand/on-command/on-call/on-order etc…”
Well best of luck, quality is high as evidenced by the Local Ad episode. I look forward to using the service and supporting the networks and their content.
i don’t mind watching ads that are interesting and relevant to my lifestyle – so hulu needs to take advantage of the direct relationship that isn’t really found on TV. so hulu seems like it could become interesting someday. but i’ll pass for now; it simply doesn’t have what i need (i.e., an iPod connection).
I am waiting to have acess to HULU, it´s the new generation of “TV”, you costum, what you want to see and when. Yes, you can by, and yes you can have cable, but higher values that all the “TVs” make are from advertising. I don´t mind to have some adverstising, if in the end I have the content.
Hoping to be one of the first to have HULU in Portugal.
Ben –
you’d be surprised to find that when it comes to new media, baby boomers are just as likely to be tapped into that market as the younger generation… why? their psyche is that they are still young, they are technologically saavy, and they have the disposable income. They’re more apt to have blackberries and iPods and iPhones and use iTunes and surf the internet than you think.
Hulu isn’t just “for the younger generation,” just look at some of the content Hulu has gotten. Some of the programs most definitely skew to an older crowd and the baby boomer generation will absolutely love this. They are a market that absolutely should not be ignored and thought of as “those old farts who don’t know their way around a computer.” These are people who invented them. Their buying power is extraordinarily high and they aren’t afraid to spend it.
Gotta say, I’m reading some of these comments and allow me to summarize:
1) People overseas are complaining that they can’t purchase shows they’re not supposed to even be getting yet…
2) Other people are complaining that they would rather buy the shows on iTunes, rather than get them for free… (understandable – better quality and portability)
3) There’s some sort of online/comment/blog-battle going on about the viewership of TV programs vs. iTunes and the like.
So, boiling all of that down, some people are trying to diss a product before it’s even officially launched because they feel they’re they cool kids with iThis and iThat. Oddly enough, not everybody has an iPod, iTouch, iPhone or uses iTunes. In fact, those of you posting here complaining about all of that are, in fact, in the minority.
NBC and Fox are pretty smart here, in my opinion. They’ll have control over their programming and their shows. They’ll be able to package them with whatever they want – be it a commercial spot, or a clickable hotspot during the show, whatever. A multitude of doors are open to them that weren’t under YouTube and iTunes. Hang in there and eventually your beloved shows will be available for purchase again, but on their terms, not Steve Jobs’. They’ll also be able to have a bigger ROI, as well as make the writers happier what with the strike going on and all.
Personally, I love hulu already and I’m glad that NBC wisened up about offering shows like The Office on here for free. I hated the fact that something would come up Thursday night and I would miss an episode. Then I would get pissed that I could find all of their newer shows I didn’t watch nor care about on nbc.com, but The Office I would have had to pay for on iTunes. Just an example.
I also love that you can sort of create your own clip and send it to a friend. Say you get an e-mail from a friend and you decide to reply by sending a clip of Conan O’Brien saying something in response. Just one of a myriad of things I would do to have fun with it.