Insomnic Dreams

You may have noticed that some of your favorite clips from TV shows are missing from YouTube.  I had a nice list of Family Guy clips that I liked to go back to on occasion for a good chuckle. All my saved Family Guy clips are gone and they are nowhere to be found on YouTube anymore. I did find where they went to though … Hulu.

Hulu is the video site for NBC Universal and News Corp where they host their clips, special videos, full length TV episodes, and full length movies. The TV episodes and movies are presented with limited commercial interruption (usually just one at the beginning and one quick one every half hour for longer episodes or movies) and in good streaming video quality. Signing up for an account will allow you to do much of the common things you’d expect on a video site including creating playlists, keeping track of favorites, and commenting on videos.  An account also allows you to watch age restricted content – which was a bit of a surprise to even have available.

Some of the viewing features are common like full screen or pop-out window, but they also offer a “Lower Lights” option which just dims the surrounding webpage to make the video more prominent. They also allow easy sharing with MySpace, Facebook, Digg, and a few other popular social and bookmark sites and include one trick that isn’t common: scene selection.  You can actually choose the start and end point of what you are sharing.

So what content is available at Hulu? Here’s a list of some of the stations and I think you’ll see quite a bit of content is covered.

• Fox (and all Fox Sports, Fox News, Fox etc)
• FX
• Speed
• Fuel
• National Geographic
• 20th Century Fox
• Fox Searchlight
• NBC
• MSNBC
• CNBC
• Universal Pictures

As you can see, that’s a lot of content to pull from so here’s a few items from their “recently added” listing:

• NBA highlights
• Full NHL game of Stars at Red Wings
• Law and Order excerpts
• Deal or No Deal highlights
• Heroes season 3 trailer
• Last night’s Tonight Show episode
• The latest episode of Bones
• The movies Rob Roy, January Man, and Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
• Behind the scenes of Indiana Jones 4

Of course, those missing Family Guy clips can be found here as well:
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.551690&w=425&h=350&fv=]
I don’t know why that clip cracks me up so much but it does. 

So obviously there is a lot available to watch here and it is Flash based video so will work on all platforms – though the higher quality videos means a little bit longer wait for buffering if you are on a slower internet connection. There is one major restriction – it only works for people in the United States.  There are ways around this little restriction, but for legal reasons they have to restrict access.

Overall, Hulu is a nice video site.  It’s organized well and kept very simple with advertising being very minimal. There is a lot of content and the quality is excellent.  I see no reason not to add this site to your list of favorite time wasters.

Related posts:

1. YouTube Adds TV and Movies
2. YouTube In HD
3. Online Viewing: Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy and Hulu