Review of Hulu
By Arrwyn Cliona Odhalt
Hulu’s
commercial are funny and star many actors with whom we already are
very familiar. But my experience with Hulu has been quite satisfactory. You see, I don’t own a television set. I did not watch much television when I did own one, but not having the option had been a bit of a hardship. I’d spend my day doing my work which often went deep into the night. With my brain wired for work, some television would allow me to reach a quieter state of mind so that I could actually sleep when I went to bed.
Hulu has given me not only the option to watch television with limited
commercial interruptions but has allowed me to see entire seasons of shows of which I’ve missed a good deal and allows me to watch favorite episodes over again. I’ve also been able to watch current episodes of first run shows the week after their air date. Hulu also offers some background footage of several shows. An example is Sanctuary. I’ve watched most of the first season and now the first episodes of the second season. I’ve also watched footage of interviews with the actors and production people which were very enlightening as Sanctuary is a new type of production and demonstrates the actor’s skills much better than even conventional shows as all the sets on Sanctuary are done in a green room. While they interact with each other or the set the actors are actually seeing nothing but blank green walls! I grew fond of Amanda Tapping while she was on Stargate: SG-1 so I was interested in Sanctuary mostly for her, now I watch the show because it is good.
Finding what you want to watch on Hulu is easy, simply type in the name of the show in the search bar. When I’ve requested episodes of currently running shows on CBS Hulu will transfer me to the website for CBS, itself. I’ve found the website for Hulu extremely easy to navigate and it is a free access because they do run
commercials but only one at each break so I’m not wasting 15 minutes of time with commercials for products or services in which I have no interest. My only complaint is about the commercials themselves. An “hour long” episode is engineered for only 40 to 48 minutes of air time with the remainder of the hour dedicated to commercials, so an episode watched on Hulu is less than an hour and most usually the four or five commercial breaks are exactly the same commercial as most often the show is sponsored by only one retailer. The commercials get very boring when you’ve seen the same one 5 times in an hour. If it were possible to make a suggestion to the sponsors, I’d suggest using 4 or 5 different commercials for their product per show. Perhaps this is more expensive but as I recall broadcast television in the course of a day one would see more than a single commercial for the same product so the retailers do make different commercials it is just the ones used for Hulu viewing do not vary within the course of a program.
Personally, I’d give Hulu three stars.