Hulu Usage Increases

I’ve been a fan of the Hulu video service since I first got on the beta for it last year. It’s been great catching up on new shows, like The Office and House, and old favorites, like Firefly and Babylon 5, for free using the Hulu service. Apparently others are enjoying it too since there were 63.2 million videos viewed on it in April. Of course this is a far cry from YouTube’s billions but it is significant for the new service.

Major advertisers have flocked to Hulu since it’s one of the few legal places where television viewers can locate recently broadcast shows as well as older, off-the-air, shows. The other option is to download them from legally questionable sources that vary in quality and risk malware infection or to buy a DVD when it’s available.

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What Hulu Could Do Better

Hulu could do some things better and the biggest of these is to offer their service to viewers outside of the United States. Hulu says that this is a top priority for them and rumor has it that they will have beta testing available in some European locations by the end of the year. Regional licensing and copyright issues are the problem here although rights owners are beginning to realize that there is considerable potential in the service.

The other thing that I would like would be for them to make more shows available, particularly older series. I would also like for them to make the expiration date of content clearer so that you can anticipate when a video is going to be pulled.

Have you tried Hulu? What did you think? If you live outside the US, are you looking forward to Hulu becoming available in your country?

Television
dvd, Hulu, videos, YouTube