Hulu.com Debuts: Worth the Wait
The knives are out for Hulu.com, the NBC Universal-News Corp. anti-YouTube intitiative?
“I think there’s a snarky desire to say this is big dumb media and this is a big dumb joint venture,” said Peter Chernin, president of the News Corporation.
Not here at Insider Chatter! Since June, I have chronicled and anlayzed the impending debut of Hulu.com (NewCo) following first-hand presentations and Q & A with top NBC Universal execs at diverse media and tech conferences in Manhattan. ( NBC: Millions in Upfront Video Ad Sales and Who Needs YouTube: Good NBC, ABC Stuff Free AND Legal! )
In NBC on Why Hulu.com IS a YouTube Killer: OMMA Report last month I cited a confident George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s Chief Digitlal Officer, in laying out an intelligent Hulu.com business model strategy based on the premise that “quality” always wins out.
Hulu.com unveils its private beta today and its quality wins vision is out of the online video gate:
Hulu’s ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection of premium programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature films, clips, and more. Additionally, we want to give you more choices of when and where you can enjoy your favorite programming, while creating innovative experiences that let you watch and participate in online video in new and exciting ways.
Hulu.com aims to ofer its premium content via a premium viewing experience:
Hulu is designed with a singular focus on providing an exceptional, online video viewing experience. You can customize the experience to fit your viewing preferences - watch videos in full screen, or pop out the video player and place it anywhere on your computer screen and re-size it if you’re multi-tasking. You can even dim the lights and mute the rest of the browser window so nothing distracts you from the video you’re watching.
Hulu.com “gets” Web 2.0, “sharing is caring”:
Hulu lets you easily share your favorite videos via email or embed them on your own website. You can even choose to share the entire video or just one scene. By selecting the share or embed feature, you have the option of selecting your own start and stop point in a video to create your own fun video clips.
Hulu lets you enjoy your favorite videos at websites where you are already spending your time online. Visit our partner sites: AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo, to view the same selection of premium programming available at Hulu.com. Each partner features content in its own customized video player to provide a seamless viewing experience on their sites.
While Hulu.com is still in private beta, a sneak preview of the “fun” video time in store is offered by Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu:
I’m embedding a full episode of The Office (it gets my vote for funniest show on television). In addition to watching it from this page, you can easily grab and embed the full episode - or a clip that you determine - at your own blog or on other web pages that you manage. Just mouse over the below screen, go to the menu, and click on embed. We hope you enjoy this and other functionality that we’re offering to make it easy to share your favorites from Hulu with others.
While Hulu.com will soon be off to the races, NBC Universal itself still has YouTube to contend with, YouTube’s copyright infringement that is. SEE: Google To World: Give YouTube Your Videos, NOW! and NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report and NBC Still Booming on YouTube: Google Lawsuit Next?
PLUS: NBC, MediaZone Olympic Marathon First: Free, Live Streaming of Trials