Collins’ Onovia

This past Friday night I got an invitation from Hulu to start beta testing their service. Hulu, a venture shared by NBC Universal and News Corp, offers full feature sitcom episodes, clips, and other video content free of charge.

The layout of hulu is astoundingly easy to use. There’s no hunting down what you want to watch. Just look for the logo of the show or network, and click. A slick flash interface for the player blows away any other flash video player I’ve seen. Check out the screen shots below.

The quality of the flash videos is top notch. Here’s a shared video clip of The Simpsons.

Of course, not every one is happy with hulu. There are reports that people out of the United States are not able to use the service. This is probably due to some stupid export rule. Something like this is probably going to come back and bite hulu in the ass. For example, Udo Schroeter talks about how restricting access will only lead to people obtaining the videos illegally. Perhaps the team at hulu should rethink their blocking access?

Anyways, head on over to http://www.hulu.com/ and register for the beta access.