Hulu Launches Hulu Labs With New Desktop Client
Posted 05/29/09 at 04:20:32 PM by Andy Salisbury
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Just this week Hulu launched their new service, Goog—err, Hulu Labs in the interest of letting their users get a more hands on approach to the development of the site.
“To help us learn from user feedback […], we’re excited to open up a new Hulu Labs section on the site today. At Hulu Labs, we’ll provide sneak peeks at some of the upcoming releases from our product roadmap, some of which are personal projects and hobbies our devs have been cooking up,” wrote Eric Feng, Hulu’s CTO on their official blog. “From new recommendation algorithms to tools for building custom widgets to a time-based view for browsing your favorite shows, we’ll be sharing a variety of these new creations with you at Hulu Labs and looking forward to your thoughts on how to make these products better.”
They also released the beta for Hulu Desktop, an application that has been optimized to let you watch all of your favorite shows (so long as they’re hosted on Hulu) on your desktop or media center PC. The UI has been designed with a small Microsoft or Apple remote in mind, making it a very reasonable contender for all the media center PCs out there.
Image Credit: Hulu
Still locked to the US? The
Submitted by Khaled on Sun, 05/31/2009 - 11:14am
Still locked to the US? The rest of the world will just yawn... and continue to bittorrent, oh and some will probably buy the DVD box later on (I'm guilty of buying those boxes....)
About Time
Submitted by Caskey.100 on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 11:57pm
I have been waiting for some time now for Hulu to finally release something like this. No longer do I need my application shortcut through Chrome to get a sleek Hulu interface. This really is a big selling point for Media Center PC's as most of the popular shows are boradcasted on Hulu. What would be even nicer is if they setup sometihng where youc can setup a favorites list or a show bookmark so that it can be easier to find a certain series that you watch often, etc. Hulu is slowly turning into the Web Video monopoly......
Submitted by mls067 on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 11:52am
Well, I don't know what the rants are about on here so I am just going to add my 2 cents about the product. I like it so far. I have only poked around for about an hour but it seems like they are heading in the right direction. Now if I can figure out how to port it to my 360 (I don't want to move my 'puter to the tv room and I can't build another pc for that just yet)
Submitted by devin3627 on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 2:40am
OKAY! STFU! condoning? then pirate with profection............ you are someone who lives in their moms shed......... nvm!!!!!!!!!!!! any normal person would figure it out..... hulu is bat shit. they are cheap peices of crap that you can pull out of a dead moles ass! excuse me! but they lazy small-minded imbeciles!
Submitted by nate5532 on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 12:54am
I'm pissed that hulu came out with their own interface. What was all of that bullshit about their "content partners" would not allow boxee to display hulu? If they wanted to compete, just come out and say it, don't be a bitch and lie about it. I'm not even going to download the hulu program because it just plays hulu. If you're building an HTPC, why would you want a hulu-only box? That's pretty narrow-minded of hulu, there is way more content on the internet than just them. What about playing netflix, comedy central, abc, and my divx movies? Boxee is the bomb and is far superior for any application, and hulu are a bunch of fat headed pigs.
as Jay and silent Bob would say... "fuck them in their stupid asses".
Submitted by arkweld on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 8:23pm
Yep, I see the level of MPC commentary is still sliding down the intellectual scale ...
There's a reason Web video dies and that's not just a lack of control over content but a way to justify that content's existence online. When a network can measure exactly who is viewing what and for how long they are more inclined to allow it to be free to view. When third parties like Boxee break that interface it breaks that system.
You can tell how little you know when you are complaining about a service that still allows you to view online video for free. You should be enjoying it while it lasts because if cablenets fall in line with cableco plans you won't be watching anything online unless you can prove you have a subscription package to one of their television channels. "TV Everywhere"- go look it up.
And if you are building a HTPC why would it be restricted to one piece of software - either Boxee or Hulu? Do you have trouble switching between applications? I could care less Hulu don't use Boxee. I mean, holy shit, I'll have to open up another application to watch content from other networks, how will I survive the complex procedure involved in doing that?
ABC have already signed on to Hulu and will be adding content shortly. You just haven't been keeping up with the news have you? Most other networks will move to Hulu if they have any sense. Especially CBS which has a piss poor UI and content level. Then nearly all online television will be running through Hulu, especially when it launches overseas later this year. In that case you might be using Hulu more than Boxee.
So enjoy Hulu while you can and stop complaining. This time next year cablecos might just fuck up the whole online television thing completely. And that's not including the bandwidth cap market you might be in.
Finally!
Submitted by the_river on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 8:32pm
I got the equipment already hooked up! Now I don't need to buy satellite! Ok maybe if I wanted all the HD glory but the Bluray drive does the job. Too bad DSL sucks on bandwidth for the HD content but I can deal with that until I move and get decent bandwidth. It's good to know that now I can watch Hulu content full screen on my 1080p at least.
It's a good start. I like the menu already. Finally a good flash based system for any resolution. Thanks MaxPC for the article. I was just speaking with one of the groomsman for the wedding tomorrow and he saw this article too. He said the Boxee software is really cool too. The best man hears about Hulu and asks, 'How good is it?'
Word gets around.
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