Posts Tagged ‘ hulu

Cutting Out Cable Television. My Alternatives.

Over 2 weeks have passed since I called up Cox Communications and told them to cancel my cable television service. You would think that this would be a hard transition for someone like me. Considering almost my whole life I have lived with cable tv. But it has been pretty easy and I am actually liking my entertainment options better. There are only 2 downsides to not having cable tv. I miss having TNT and ESPN to watch basketball. I also miss just channel surfing through over 100 channels. Yes I was one of those people who would change the channel all the time. During commercials or just because I was bored with what I was watching. So I don’t have the option to flip through channels anymore. So how am I keeping myself entertained these days? Here is how I am cutting out cable television.

On my first day without cable I decided to go out and buy an antenna. Thanks to AntennaWeb.org I was able to see that I would pick up a decent amount of local channels with just a cheap antenna. So the antenna takes care of local channels. It picks up FOX and MY45. Both channels show Family Guy. So I am a happy. The rest of my entertainment options come via the PS3.

Sony added flash 9 to the PS3 browser a few months ago. This lets me enjoy videos from the internet on my TV. So I am able to watch movies, sports games and video podcasts right on my TV by utilizing the PS3 browser. Another thing the PS3 does is it connects to media servers. I am then able to watch videos that I have stored on my computer.

My favorite alternative so far has got to be Netflix. Many of my friends use Netflix so I knew it was a good service. But what I didn’t expect was the amount of content they offered for you to watch instantly. Once I started browsing what you could watch instantly I immediately signed up for an account. I am using a program called PlayOn which lets me watch content from Netflix through the PS3. The program also lets you watch content from Hulu, Youtube, ESPN and much more.

If you have any other suggestions on alternatives please leave them in the comments.

Popularity: 79% [?]

Who knew that HULU would be so Coolu?

View of HULU with the simpsons playing


Yesterday I was shocked when I received a beta invite to join Hulu.com. I didn’t even remember signing up to get into the beta. But I received an invite and decided to check it out and I’m glad that I did. For those unaware of what Hulu is let me give you a brief description.

Hulu is NBC Universal and News Corporation’s online video joint venture. Hulu videos will be played in their own embeddable branded player. Content from at least a dozen TV networks and two major film studios is promised. Initial distribution partners include AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. – CrunchBase

So what makes Hulu so good? Well first and most importantly it is completely free. Hulu lets you watch complete episodes of some of your favorite shows and also has a few movies so far. It already has a pretty decent library of videos to watch and it is very early in the beta. Hulu’s library includes such popular shows as The Office, Family Guy, The Simpsons and one of my favorite shows of the past Doogie Howser. Yes it even has Doogie. You are also able to embed any of the videos. So someone could legally create a website with all the episodes of a show or a movie. Currently Hulu is using video ads during the episodes that run for 5 to 20 seconds. So basically if you are watching a 20 minute episode you will have a total of about 50 seconds of ads. Which is not bad at all. So enjoy the following episode of Family Guy which is embedded from Hulu.

**EDIT** December 28th, 2007
It looks like the first video I embedded was taken off the hulu site so here is a new video.

Popularity: 18% [?]