Hulu –

I’m really excited about this, Hulu just came out of private beta and is now open for anybody to use! What? You’ve never heard of Hulu? Then hear this: free movies, and free TV. Yeah, I figured that would catch your attention!

Hulu is a joint venture by NBC and News Corp., which started in March 2007; its mission is clear and direct: “help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where, and how you want it.” It’s a browser-based, streaming-video database. Imagine something like Youtube, but with corporate media content. The majority of its selection comes from networks like NBC, FOX, and CBS, but that isn’t the crazy part: they have entire series up for viewing, for free. Consider this: you can either buy each season on DVD for upwards of $20, or watch each “must see TV’ episode for free, online… and it’s legal (that is the big sell for me)! No crowding your shelf space, no maxing out your hard-drive, no more missed episodes ‘cause your lady-friend just had to go look at bed sheets and wallpaper that night. Sadly, I’ll never be able to re-coup from missing that Heroes finale costume party…

Let’s take a gander at the content available. As I mentioned, Hulu offers both TV shows and movies to watch online, both old and new. That’s right, you can finally find out who that other guy, opposite Don Johnson, was in Miami Vice (Philip Michael Thomas). Other older, off-the-air shows include both seasons of Buck Rogers, The Tick, Charlie’s Angels, Arrested Development (there is a God!) and so many more. Newer shows include some personal favorites of mine like The Office, King of the Hill, 24, The Riches, and plenty more. The movie collection is still growing and growing; some notable titles are Sideways, The Big Lebowski, 28 Days Later, Moonstruck, and plenty of old Hollywood-flunkies. In some cases, the whole show or movie is not available and instead delivered in clips, which isn’t a terrible loss since now I can find some of the best SNL skits of all time.

The experience in watching all of these things online exceeded my expectations: I was able to watch full episodes and movies with minimal lag over a basic WiFi-connection. The service is ad-supported with maybe three 15-second ads throughout a single episode, or nine over a full movie. They aren’t overly intrusive or annoying, according to the time I’ve spent using Hulu.

Hulu was in private beta for some time, but opened up to public-use on March 12th, so you can freely sign up for an account and begin viewing immediately. There is no necessary download, just be sure you have the latest Flash viewer. So go check it out at Hulu.com.