Hulu site sets new online video standard

The online video trend shows no signs of letting up with a brand-new site opening this week that sets a new standard for the video-on-demand movement with scores of old and not-so-old TV shows and movies that can be watched online for free.

The Hulu site opened for the public Wednesday and of all the online sites that are now showing video, this is the best I’ve seen. I got so hooked reviewing it Wednesday afternoon that I watched a half-dozen “Saturday Night Live” skits I’ve missed lately, plus a few of the old favorites from vintage “SNL” shows, a “Simpsons” episode and, for 1:46 minutes, the powerful thriller “The Usual Suspects.”

The site is jointly owned by the News Corp. (Fox TV) and NBC Universal (NBC) and is filled with TV clips and full episodes from popular, currently running NBC and Fox shows, such as “Arrested Development,” “Prison Break” and “Heroes.” There’s talk that CBS may join the partnership in future days. ABC is doubtful as it seems to be going its own Disney way.

Besides the current shows, there are plenty of classic programs and reruns, too, like “Adam 12,” ” Hill Street Blues” and “Starsky and Hutch.” You’ll also find sporting events, music videos and what Hulu says will be a growing list of fairly recent full-length movies. To watch the movies, you need to sign up for a free account. But all the viewing is totally free.

What’s the catch?

You have to watch commercials that sandwich around the shows you choose to watch. I encountered one at the beginning of everything I watched. The commercial that ran before “The Usual Suspects” was the 1:45 trailer for the new “Leatherheads” movie starring George Clooney. After that, the movie ran, uninterrupted by any other ads. At other times, when I clicked on a category or browsed a genre, a short commercial would also play, but nothing anywhere near as obnoxious as the 20 minutes of ads that air during a typical prime-time show during its regular broadcast time on TV.

On Hulu, you watch the videos at your computer online and they stream pretty clean. Obviously, you need a broadband cable or DSL connection. You wouldn’t want to try this with dial-up.

But watched on my Comcast home cable connection, I noticed barely a trace of the herky-jerky, stuttering video glitches that other streaming sites struggle with. The programs and movies played almost as if I was playing back a DVD. The quality of the images and sound was excellent. Now I don’t know if that will change when a lot of people discover the site and it starts playing a lot of simultaneous streams, but Wednesday, it was about as flawless of a streaming experience that I have ever had watching online video.

You can watch the shows and movies in a box on the Hulu Web page or, by clicking a button, full screen. You can also pause it (which I did several times to take phone calls). If you want to see a scene over again, just drag the player marker on the control window back a bit.

I’m very impressed with Hulu. There are lots of TV shows and movies in lots of different venues. It’s only going to get better. I think this is going to be hugely popular and a site we’ll look back on as advancing online entertainment to new mainstream levels.

The one down side is the programs have to be watched “live” on Hulu. You can’t download them.

There are, however, sites that do let you download TV shows. Here’s one. It’s a membership site but it has TV shows, movies, music and thousands of files you can download right to your computer. It works with Macs and PCs, too.