Hulu is no longer in beta, and has now launched to the public. It includes some great television programming, such as the Simpsons, Family Guy, Saturday Night Live, The Office and more. It also has some great movies, such as The Big Lebowski, The Usual Suspects and The Jerk. Hulu has clearly taken the lead of ABC in developing the ad platform, offering single "sponsors" for each of the full episodes. In terms of movies, they're using the same ad model, but with significantly more ad breaks, due to the length. One of the other great aspects of Hulu is that they're allowing comments for episodes, clips and movies.
However, I have to say that the biggest drawback I can see with Hulu is the consistency of quality. This appears to vary based on the network it's from. The Saturday Night Live clips, for example, are high quality and in a widescreen format. Clips from The Simpsons and Family Guy, however, aren't widescreen, and the quality is noticeably less.
It will be interesting to see how consumers embrace Hulu versus going to the network sites directly.
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