March 12, 2008

Hulu launches

Around 1:45AM this morning, Hulu shed the covers of private beta and opened to the public. Anyone in the U.S. can now come to our site and watch any of our videos for free. No special software needed other than a web browser, Flash player, and an internet connection. PC, Mac, Linux users, we support all of you.

We've all substituted caffeinated beverages for sleep for days now, and this morning I came into work with my t-shirt on backwards. Coherence is going to be a bit of a reach.

We have increased our content lineup significantly. Among my favorites:

People love to associate Hulu with big media because of some of our investors, but Hulu is a startup through and through (look at the team photo below, taken at around 1:50 this morning--I don't think we look big media, do you?). It's the smallest company I've ever worked at if you don't count the lemonade stand I ran one summer day when I was about 8. Smaller than Amazon.com was when I worked there. We have our initial investments from which to run our company, but we're not going to be spending it on big parties with models walking around holding trays of saffron baby lamb chops. No, our pre-launch evening meal for everyone pulling an all-nighter was some 100 tacos from a local taco truck here in Santa Monica, at the extravagant cost of $1.25 per taco. Our biggest spend that night, out of our own pockets, was to raise $160 among the team to dare one of our star programmers Andrew to drink two cups of salsa, one red hot, one green, in 30 seconds. Andrew woke this morning $160 richer, though I'd venture to guess he paid the price sometime during the day.


A small group of people, a little family, work night and day (sometimes more night than day) to put this site together from scratch. Some of the user e-mails I've read make the easy assumption that we're an ignorant, uncaring media behemoth, but we do care, perhaps too much for our own peace of mind. Between Eric, Betina, and myself, we've read well over 10,000 e-mails since we went into our private beta, and rather than go the form e-mail response route, we've tried to respond personally to every e-mail we can. We're gratified by the compliments, and we agonize over the angry e-mails, even the inaccurate and/or profane ones.

We do want to be able to distribute our content internationally. We do want to offer more episodes of every show on our site. We do want more varied ad creative so that we don't have to watch the same ad spots over and over. We do want closed-captioning on every video on our site. And we do want to do it legally, in a way that compensates the creative people all the way back at the start of the food chain. Not a day goes by that we don't wish we could just accelerate the future with a snap of our fingers and have everyone in the world streaming HD content to their plasma TV's.

It's easy to bash big media and claim to be forced to resort to piracy, and it is absolutely the right of users to write in with their honest feedback. It's the most useful kind. But it's far harder to try to fix the problems. It's easy to open up your blog editor and rip the movie you just saw. It's exponentially harder to go out and make a movie. It's easy to laugh at some startup you read about in the news because the business plan sounds terrible. It's much harder to start a company yourself.

We're working here to try to fix the industry from within. We want to be able to watch all our favorite videos however we want, just like you. We're building this service to be one we want to use. We're not anywhere near the finish line. It always feels like the to-do list outweighs the completed side of the ledger. But if it didn't, then it wouldn't be that interesting a challenge, and most of us probably wouldn't be here.

Check out our site, and if you don't mind, help spread the word. The more users we can rally to our cause, the quicker we can transform things for the better.

Cheers!

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Posted by eugene at March 12, 2008 5:37 AM
Comments

CONGRATULATIONS! The site is awesome. Everyone at work has been buzzing about this. Very cool.

Posted by: Allen at March 12, 2008 10:40 AM

I really like Hulu but I want it on my TV possibly via the Wii .Sure I can hook my laptop up to my TV but the Wii browser is just easy to use and always connected to my TV .

Ive noticed on HULU Embeds you get the Shows Audio but no Video on the Wii so it seems to be slightly compatible with the Wii or their is a bug .

I know Nintendo/Opera and Abode have had issues over the Flash SDK for devices and the Wii only is supposed to support flash 7 but if Hulu and others talked to the folks at Abode and Nintendo maybe you could find a fix or possibly develop a Wiiware channel and create a Wii native code HULU channel for at least North America for now .

Other developers are creating Wii optimised websites like http://www.ffwd.com/wii and http://www.moowee.tv/app/ and some of those are also looking at creating Wiiware channels http://blog.ffwd.com/2008/02/20/the-wii-is-a-social-entertainment-device/

At the moment viewers and early adopters can still stream Network shows to their Wii's if they download them from Bittorrent usually with the commercials removed and stream them from their PC with a little streaming client that transcodes video to flash and streams it to the Wii http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=202108 )

The Wii is just the tip of the iceburg when it comes to viewing IPTV on your TV and expect Internet ready TVs to be the norm in a few years but what is really innovative is the Wii Remote and its possibilities as a controller. Nintendo realizes this and recently launched a TV guide channel in Japan .

Please look into this Eric I think not developing for the Wii is a great missed opportunity for many IPTV start-ups .

Posted by: Matt at March 13, 2008 5:45 AM

Great Job !

Great job, Eugene. I really like Hulu v1.0 but most of all I like the attitude I'm seeing exhibited in your commentary. Certainly looks like you and the crew there have your hearts in the right place in trying to make this an enterprise that has consumer appeal as well as studio approval/backing. I hope you guys are successful and accomplish everything you've set out to do.

Posted by: Eludium-Q36 at March 13, 2008 8:46 PM

I've been an instant convert to Hulu since I received my glorious beta invite, and a big believer in its purpose... congrats on the launch!

Posted by: Matt at March 14, 2008 1:42 AM

I just want to know why this site isn't available in Canada? Why are all these great shows given to to everyone in the U.S. and no one else? I know tons of people that would love to join this site.

Posted by: Jeff at March 14, 2008 11:16 AM

Congratulations. Nice job.

Posted by: Bruce at March 14, 2008 11:27 AM

I just want to know why this site isn't available in HONG KONG? Why are all these great shows given only to the U.S. and no one else? Please, let other countries such as HONG KONG enjoy the privelege of watching & joining this AWESOME SITE!!

Posted by: fizzler at March 16, 2008 3:45 AM

Well, how typical. This is US-ONLY service, but there is no mention of that, nowhere. Why bother - US is THE world. And the suckers outside The World Called US may click on every movie and find out - Haa-Haa No Show For You Loser. Very entertaining indeed. I hope you all at Hulu are laughing at us.

Posted by: Peter at March 18, 2008 1:49 PM

The reason we are not currently available to anyone outside the U.S. has nothing to do with any biases against any specific countries, or any U.S.-centrism on our part. The way the content industry works right now is that they divide the world into markets and sell the rights for each market separately. The content owners have granted us U.S.-only streaming rights for now.

A show that might be cleared for U.S. streaming may have been sold off to a local network overseas, and that local network won't be too happy if the content they paid lots of money to air on TV is suddenly available for free on the web.

That's the explanation for why things are the way they are, but we're not asking that you like it. We're well aware that the web is global, that such restrictions contribute to piracy, and that it's really damn frustrating to be an English-speaker overseas and not be able to watch the shows that you love.

We have been and will continue to work on the issue. In addition to all the significant legal issues are business and technical issues. Many advertisers don't want to pay for ads streamed to people outside the U.S., so we need to line up local advertisers in different markets so we can continue to bring you our content free, ad-supported. We need to ensure the content delivery infrastructure is in place so our videos stream smoothly to people overseas.

It's a long-term project, not something we can control completely in-house and just crank out. Believe me, we have enough people from all over the world inside our company that we have no particular biases against Canada, or the U.K, or U.S. military personnel overseas, or Mexico, Australia, or any of the hundreds of countries we've heard from. We're happy to be one more industry whipping boy for you to take out your frustrations on, but we hope you'll consider that we're working hard on your behalf before opening the flame-thrower.

Posted by: Eugene at March 18, 2008 4:50 PM

I have to say congratulations to the entire Hulu team! I was an original beta sign-upper when there was only about 3 or 4 shows on and I knew then that this site was the next Apple! I look forward to watching you grow as the weeks and months go on. Make sure you get some sleep and never lose your creative spark!

Now I'll do my part by telling everyone I know about this awesome service (and subscribing to a faster internet service so I can enjoy it more!)

Posted by: Hunter at March 19, 2008 6:39 PM

Great work on the site. One feature I would like to see in the future is parental controls -- something that would allow parents to lock-out shows on Hulu.com or allow access to shows à la carte. Perhaps you might even have a feature where a parent can set up a "kids" account (with extra privacy features where the parent enters his/her data, not his/her child's) that allows only kid-friendly content (and a cookie so only kid-friendly commercials play).

There is a huge growth potential in this nitch, and empowering the customer is usually a great thing.

Again, great site. I'm looking forward to watching AirWolf, Knight Rider, and all of my favorite shows from when I was a kid. Keep it up.

~ Josue

Posted by: Josue at March 25, 2008 6:33 AM

WILL YOU PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CONSIDER PUTTING "CYBILL" ON HULU.COM? It stars Cybill Shepard and Christine Baranski. A sitcom from the mid ninties. I would give you my soul if you posted it here.

Posted by: Cassie at March 25, 2008 7:37 AM

I think what Peter was trying to say (but not very tactfully) was that it would be nice if it said a little more clearly on the home page that the site is only available in the US. I was so excited when I found the page - some of my US buddies had told me about it. I settled in for an evening of enjoying my childhood shows only to find I couldn't watch it at all. I know it's not your fault at all and I do congratulate you on the work you have done for this site as my friends love it. But had it said on the home page something about being available only in the US at the current time, I wouldn't have bothered going through the lists of shows and getting my cup of tea ready to settle in for the evening.
Stupid Canadian laws! I'm sure someone is scared they'll make a little less money if I have hulu access.

Posted by: Liz Martin at March 28, 2008 7:23 PM

Liz - that's fair, and we apologize for the disappointment. We should have new, more prominent messaging for our international visitors posted to the site shortly, and in the meantime, we'll continue to work on the whole international issue.

Posted by: Eugene at April 2, 2008 12:57 AM

I am truely in awe of how fast and clear the videos are. Skeptical I was at first, but now amazed and ecstatic. My quick question is how do you plan on maintaning the speeds as more and more users begin to use this great service? And secondly, what process is in place to determine what shows/movies are added next?

Posted by: Adam at April 11, 2008 1:31 PM

Absolutely love your site...have been on it three nights running. I have no complaints at all and look forward to seeing more of my favorites.

Posted by: Jim Heckman at April 11, 2008 10:11 PM

OK now I have a small complaint. A couple of nights ago I stated Burn Baby Burn (Part 1) from Medium. I got interupted and finished it last night...only there is no part 2 listed... episodes 7 9 10 11 12 but no 8. Will that be fixed, please?

Posted by: Jim Heckman at April 16, 2008 7:19 AM

I would be really glad if you could have a wii compatible site. I mean why not all you have to do is when a wii tries to connect it redirects to a flash 7 site. Is that so hard?

p.s. I also heard that joost is going to be in the new video on demand channel so...

>>>>>>>>>it is time to revoulutionise the way wii think of internet tv<<<<<<<<<<<

Posted by: wiiOwner37 at January 26, 2009 3:22 PM
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