Thursday, the mind gobbling aliens behind hulu opened up the door to their lab revealing some upcoming product extensions. The post comes from Hulu’s CTO, who begins by sharing a compelling argument as to why one should leave their product roadmap flexible, as well as the power social media and user participation now has on defining ultimate success. He tells us that:
“An interesting stat I’ve always bought into is that you learn an order of magnitude more about your product after you ship it. For example, only 20 percent of the original Hulu.com code from our beta launch is still in use — we had to rewrite the other 80 percent to adapt to the ever-changing, and often unanticipated, needs of our users. It’s uncanny how users can take features in directions you never thought of, and teach you how to make them more interesting and useful along the way.”
Headlining the list of upcoming products is the beta release of Hulu Desktop. As Hulu puts it… “Hulu Desktop is a lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer.” In tech terms, it’s a slick flash player that provides (aggregates) the hulu.com lineup of movies and tv shows in a sleek, and out-of the-browser, new way.
My experience with Hulu Desktop was great. The UI is slick, responsive, and easily navigable. The video quality is appreciable and the content is vast (at least for current TV programming, and the movies section is beefing up). While the UI is very similar to Apple’s Front Row, Hulu Desktop delivers in areas that the Apple app does not… primarily by it’s utilization of social media tools and integration. While these are essentially functionality enhancements, the underlying API’s do require tweaks to the user interface and Hulu has achieved this with flying colors. Additionally, with its Time Based Browsing and Recommendations features, finding popular content is a snap.
Furthermore, once I plugged in my 46″ LCD HDTV as an external monitor to my 17″ MacBook Pro, I was able to take my “lean-back viewing experience” on my Mac to my usual “lean-back viewing experience” on the couch… all while pleasantly navigating around with my Apple Remote. Keep in mind that I’m also able to provide a similar experience, flawlessly and wirelessly, by streaming podcasts and other media from my MacBook Pro to my XBOX 360 on the HDTV… there is one major difference, Hulu is free!
While there are pro’s and con’s to the technologies they are currently using, ultimately I find Hulu Desktop to be a major game changer. Here’s why:
- It is paving the road to a solid network and studio backed pay per view online distribution system.
- It (almost) has the power to replace cable.
- It is bringing interactive television closer and closer to reality.
This last point has a special meaning to me in particular because I have been working on a pet project for several years that integrates online services with your television, bringing you truly interactive TV. I know I’m not the only one. In fact, interactive TV has been the Achilles heel for several company’s, with hundreds of millions of dollars dumped into it by some of the biggest company’s in the world over the last 10 years or so.
Albeit, the concept is not a new one (Joost, Boxee, XBMC) the delivery and experience is. Hulu, and Hulu Desktop should be watched, and enjoyed, closely.
More thoughts to come on the ever evolving future of interactive TV, how it will impact us, and how it will change the future of broadcast televsion as we know it.
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