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Hulu was kind enough to send over an invite to Hulu Plus and while the picture quality has been impressive on the iPhone, iPad, and full screen in 720p on my television via PC, there are still bugs to be worked out (probably why it's a preview) and before you run out and scream FREEDOM!! as you put your cable or satellite bill in a shredder, read on to find out why Hulu Plus is a step in the right direction but may not be exactly what you are looking for.
I am very impressed with Hulu Plus but being a preview it has its share of problems.
There is currently a problem with videos hitting the commercial break and either playing over and over in a continuous loop or completely crashing the iPad/iPhone/browser and having to start the video over from the start only to have the samething happen again once I get back to a commercial break.
The iPhone and standard web browser interface work as you would expect and are very intuative but the iPad interface is bare bones and has a few bugs that still need to be worked out such as the search function not working correctly. A highlight is the ability to start watching a video on one device and resuming play on another.
Not all hulu videos are considered Hulu Plus content. A great example is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is not available on Hulu Plus. From my standpoint if I am spending $9.99 per month along with commercials then I expect to see all of the content I can get on hulu.com as a part of Hulu Plus even if it is not in 720p. This has the potential to be a deal breaker for a lot of people, including myself.
I want to know what compression technology Hulu is using as the video quality over 3G is excellent, as an experiment I watched an entire episode of Glee during my daily commute on my iphone using 3G with only a momentary drop in picture and audio quality (kids do not try this at home!).
This is about as close to video on demand from any device at any time that we have gotten from any product including Netflix. Hulu Plus is also giving us video in 720p and if you are familar with Netflix in 720p, do not expect this to replace your Blu-ray collection but for streaming content it is more than acceptable.
Overall spending $9.99 isnt ideal and there is not enough content to make you dump your cable or satellite provider but Hulu Plus is the first step towards a true video on demand IPTV solution and for now will serve as a great supplement to your normal day to day media consumption.
Look for impressions from the PS3 version of Hulu Plus in a few weeks.
All photos were taken from the iPad version of Hulu Plus.
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