Hulu

Hulu was founded in March 2007 and is co-owned by NBC Universal, News Corp and Providence Equity Partners. Hulu‘s mission is to help people find and enjoy the world’s premium video content when, where and how they want it.

Hulu is trying to develop innovative technologies that deliver the best satisfied experience to the audiences. Hulu HD gallery is making HD-quality videos available to view for their audiences.

The Most exciting source that I have read is that Hulu currently receives closed-captioning data for some of their shows and is committed to expanding their library of closed-captioned content. Closed-captioned content is identified by the “cc” icon that appears next to a video title. When “cc” is available on the video that audiences want to watch they can turn on captioning by clicking on the “cc” button that appears to the left of the volume control in the video player window, then selecting a language.

Although when I first started to search hulu the first message that I saw shows: “Sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed from within the United States”. (Picture A).

hulu

However I believe eventually Hulu‘s commitment to making its content available worldwide will be realised. If Hulu achieve what they say they will then I believe the number of viewers will increase sharply and eventually it may even interrupt some major televisions or media’s businesses’ in effect. For example I am an international student who always need subtitle’s help in order to fully understand the TV contents. Currently China, Japan or other Asian countries that I know who very much enjoy watching American TV such as Prison Break, 24 and Lost. However in their original countries they don’t have these TV programmes. This creates a big gap in the market. Those audiences who can only download from internet and who are trying their best to find sufficient subtitles are often faced with bad quality media or the idea of illegal downloading. If Hulu is committed to making its content available worldwide I believe people will love to enjoy watching TV or Movies in a site like hulu.

Web TV

Although I cannot view hulu’s videos yet when I am conducting my research I am very excited about the fact that this technology is becoming available. It already has my attention and I am sure it has others too. It has a variety of channels to allow different audiences to choose to watch by their own interests. You can also see in the picture below that I have highlighted the web tab. Web video contents are original from the web like the Web TV-Bebo-The London Affair blog that I have posted about earlier. Some people are seeing this gap in the market to start filming their Web TV. Although it is not mature in the market yet I believe it will grow in the future.

hulu

In the above picture it also shows hulu has a HD gallery which allows you to watch your shows in a high definition. It may affect the business of digital TV (such as Sky and Virgin). For example customers are paying installation fees to Sky and they also pay monthly memberships as well. However if hulu is introduced in the UK I am sure the number of people who subscribe to Sky will be decreased.

Advertising in Hulu

Hulu is introducing a new way of showing advertising in their video clips. Hulu videos will have advertisements as it is free charge for viewers. Hulu has introduced an interactive way that customers can choose to watch advertising at the beginning of the video or during the video. At the same time customers can choose what type of advertising that they would like to watch. It has helped the advertisings companies choose the right audiences to watch their advertisings instead of wasting lots of money focusing on the wrong customers. For example if you are showing a handbag advertisement to male viewers it is a waste of money. Instead of that a male customer can choose to view car advertisement and he can choose to view his favourite brand car advertisings.

Hulu Web TV

By looking into the above screen capture from the Hulu site, it shows their video clips are not only shown on the TV but are also interactive with their viewers. On the left hand you can see “Embed” which allows people to copy their source to other sites in order to allow other people to watch the video as well. “Share” allows people to send this video link to their friends or groups. on the bottom of this screen capture it also shows three tabs, Main, Reviews and Discussions which all allow viewers to do more things than just watch a video only.