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Today I got invite to private Hulu.com Beta. Looks like they are expanding their beta user base, and I was lucky to get in on this next round. Though, pretty soon they will go public, I’m sure.

So, first impressions are positive! The navigation is pretty intuitive, though I did not see an easy way to navigate to other seasons of things. These are very minor, the important positives are:

• High Quality — Duhh!!! This is a single most important issue today for streaming video on the web, and so far I am very positively impressed with hulu!
• Streaming — On Demand TV is here, for real, finally!
• Huge Library — Since it’s an official effort by several major studios, they actually have Quality Content! OMG! Simpsons! House MD! Journeyman! Monk! Pretender! The list goes on and on. It looks like they are mixing old classics with new favorites, great formula, if you ask me!

Stop the presses! I can embed entire episodes or show snippets in my blog!!! This is so big that I worked hard to modify the layout of my blog and make it wider to accommodate their excellent wide-screen video size.

And now, without any further delay, check out this funny Simpsons episode! Which, hilariously enough, investigates Tivo and the demise of traditional TV model.

Remember! You saw it here first!

PS: After additional confirmation, I see that video embedded on my blog appears to be slightly lower quality than the one you would get to see on hulu.com, plus the Full Screen feature only available on Hulu.com

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Netflix quietly rolled out yet another wonderful feature! By now most of you have heard about Watch Now feature on Netflix, which allows you to watch up to your monthly dollar amount of hours of Movies "On-Demand" over the Internet. For example, if your subscription is $18 per month, you get 18 hours of Watch Now viewing for anything you can find in their, still limited, online library of movies.

But in a very exciting twist, Netlix now allows you to catch up on popular TV series via the same Watch Now feature! Have you heard all the buzz about Heros? I have! And I am the first to admit that I haven’t watched a single episode, although this show is in its second season, I believe.

So, instead of renting DVD after DVD of past seasons, simply navigate to proper Netflix Watch Now page, click Play and enjoy! Of course it still doesn’t work on airplanes or in other such places without Internet connection. Obviously, you will also need an active Netflix account (if you don’t, check out my earlier post for other TV catchup ideas). Plus your common 18 hours a month may not suffice to catch up fast enough, but no-one is preventing you from renting Season 2 on DVD while watching Season 1 streaming.

Did I mention there are No Commercial Interruptions, as of course you would expect from a DVD watching experience. Heroes Season 1, Heroes Season 2, The Office Season 1, 2 and 3 are just some of the examples I came upon. Or how about old Sci-Fi classics: Quantum Leap or Sliders ? Did you forget October is Halloween month, celebrate with Alfred Hitchcock Presents, by watching in dark isolated space over your wireless network, in the middle of the night!

Ah, the long overdue Media Buffet is almost here!

Remember, folks, You heard it here first! Now go tell your friends about it, and about where you read all about it, of course!

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Are you all Joost‘ed up yet? This video platform is revolutionary and is truly disruptive to Video on the Web, and even Cable TV for home.

It’s perfectly legal too, since just like the broadcast model, it is advertiser supported. The advertisements themselves are short and non-intrusive to me, at least for now.

Anyhow, I picked up a pair of excellent Logitech FreePulse Wireless Headphones and used them today while cooking dinner 5 feet away from my PC to enjoy this streaming entertainment. The number of channels on Joost, and their content, is continuing to expand at grand rate. They have agreements with some major networks, though I am yet to see their programming there, and they have some full length movies, including Paramount Pictures selections.

Madonna got her own channel now, with her own classic music videos playing. There are also several music channels, like the one that I am enjoying above, called GetMusic. MTV and VH1 channels mostly featuring their shows for now, not music.

The Internet bandwidth crunch is definitely going to worsen. With proliferation with this P2P platform, alongside Skype and with growing legal movie downloads (Vongo for example), I think the major providers are just sleeping if they are not planning to triple capacity every year, starting now.

Anyhow, it was fun, and I felt compelled to blog about it, while it’s still playing in an open window on my desktop. Rock on!

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