Thing #43: Online TV & Video

I took this opportunity to sign up for Hulu, which I've been hearing about from a coworker and from friends. It sounded too good to be true, and you know... it sort of *is* -- all these things for free! Amazing.

I watched the beginning of the show that was highlighted, and that was Conan O'Brien's first night as host of the Tonight Show. That was fun, as I'd missed it on broadcast TV. Then I put some featured, popular shows in my queue: a couple of highlights of Conan's previous shows -- and then I did some searching and found some old favorites, like the original Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore shows. Wonderful! So a few of those went in the queue, as well.

I explored the Time-Based Search, which was very cool. You can search a time period and find the shows that were on then.

It's good to know this is there, but I don't know that it will change my viewing habits too much. For one thing, I try not to watch too much TV, period. And when I do watch movies or TV shows in series, I tend to get them in DVD format. I don't have a way to connect my computer to my TV at this point, so I wouldn't be able to watch the Hulu shows on the big screen.

It is interesting to speculate on what this might mean for traditional broadcast and cable TV. I don't feel I know the ins and outs of it enough to comment, but it will certainly keep the dominant formats from being the monopoly in the future.