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My love/hate relationship with Hulu

posted by Nick Bonadies
Nick Bonadies
Nick Bonadies

IT Specialist : Boston

topics: PHP, Games, Technology Industry, Alcoholic Beverages, and Internet Culture

on July 10, 2008 at 07:27 PM
filed under: Internet Video and Internet Culture
I have been obsessed with watching Arrested Development on Hulu. Its totally awesome. Like really totally freaking awesome. The site is well designed, it has a ton of free content, and is super easy to use.
Now why I hate it. Either my connection at home is total garbage, or they purposefully limit bandwidth because I haven’t been able to watch a single thing on Hulu without the video sputtering to a halt at least 3 times during the course of a 24 minute episode. Now you may be thinking, thats silly, why would they do that Nick? and how the heck can you tell?
Well I can tell because the commercials NEVER sputter and NEVER have to buffer, like even if the video I’m watching is sputtering like crazy and i get to a commercial, the commercial loads fine. I suppose that’s the point though eh? The commercials are the most important part to Hulu, they make the CASH. The content is just the means to get people to the site.
Anyway, back to more Arrested Development.

4 comments

On July 11, 2008 at 10:04 AM, Adam Miller wrote:
Hey Brother!

You should get FIOS (I know you can't, but I still like to taunt). I've watched all three seasons on hulu in HD without any problems.
I love a good rant as much as the next guy, but the reason the ads don't sputter is probably because they're running off an ad-server like DART that's completely independent of the Hulu platform.

So, it's probably not your bandwith, but Hulu itself. I agree it's great, but still fairly new and built on RoR (hello Twitter downtime?).
My friend, Buster, turned me on to Arrested Development back in March. I was hooked after one episode, but too cheap to by the DVDs. I was holed up in my house for an entire rainy weekend and watched 2.5 seasons on Hulu. I only experienced some weird dubbing issue in one episode, so I restarted it and it was fine. Or, maybe I was so delirious from all that time staring at the screen I didn't notice when it happened? Even if it isn't 100%, Hulu is a great resource for cheapskates like me.
On July 15, 2008 at 01:11 PM, nick wrote:
@ jocelyn

yeah totally, i love hulu, i just wish i could make it though an episode without stuttered playback. but the more i think about it, the more it seems like my home connection is just terrible.
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