

Hulu Desktop (Mac and PC clients) - blazamos
http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop

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nwjsmith
Probably the real reason they put up such a fight against Boxee.

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justinsb
Agree - and if/when they do a deal to put Hulu on the Apple TV, then the Apple
TV would be a much more compelling product.

I like Boxee, but I don't think I would use it if Apple TV provided an easy
way to add custom 'websites/channels' e.g. Hulu.

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dgallagher
Boxee is on Apple TV if you hack it. It did have working Hulu support in the
last April 2009 build (currently Hulu isn't working for me on it, as of about
2 weeks ago - they might have broke it again, and Boxee is semi-slow at
releasing updates for their Apple TV build).

The interface is a bit clunky (due to an underpowered Apple TV). It works and
it does give you this "Oh, that's cool!" feeling, but it's not quite there
yet. If the interface was sped up more (especially when you're navigating the
menu's while a video is playing in the background), I'd love it. Comedy
Central and TED video's stream wonderfully! :)

Out of the box though, Apple TV is nearly useless unless you buy lots of
content off of iTunes for it.

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trickjarrett
Interesting note, it does NOT require an Intel processor. The site went live
with that in the requirements copy, but in truth it's just a suggested minimum
in terms of processing power.

I and @hulusupport hashed this out via twitter today and the copy should be
changed to reflect this soon.

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blazamos
<http://www.hulu.com/labs/>

Other features added today:

\-- Video Panel Designer for clip embedding

\-- Recommendations

\-- Time-Based Browsing

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blasdel
What an enormous waste -- why bother distributing a desktop app if you're
going to stick with Flash? Taking the browser out of the mix doesn't solve
anything except direct access to a remote control.

The video rendering would be a full order of magnitude more efficient if it
wasn't blitted through Adobe's craptacular runtime firs, all just to get some
measly overlays.

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jimbokun
"Taking the browser out of the mix doesn't solve anything except direct access
to a remote control."

Can you name a more important feature for a TV application?

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chriskelley
I would think reliable playback trumps using a remote control. Nothing ruins
my video experiences more than stuttering playback. If you told me I would
never get a remote control in exchange for consistently buttery framerates,
I'd take it in a heartbeat.

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philwelch
It'll be interesting to see how this works. As a user I'm a fan of thick
clients, but it's an unanswered question whether and when thick clients are a
valuable companion product for a web app. This is another data point to that
question.

(I guess Twitter is another example of a place where thick clients have a
clear place alongside the standard web thin client, but that's somewhat
different in that these thick clients are, if I'm not mistaken, produced by
third parties rather than Twitter.)

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jmtulloss
In this case, the value added seems to be the ability to use a remote.

Browsers should probably eventually have some way of detecting and using
specialty hardware on the host. It's a pretty apparent limitation right now.

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latortuga
Not to mention the fact that it runs independently from your browser tab. I
know that Chrome already has separate processes for each tab but no other
browser has that yet and sandboxing a video player in its own application is
great for stability.

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maximilian
Despite being Air based, do you think the os x performance will be any better?
I hate flash mostly because it performs horribly on os x.

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radley
Not AIR. Is actually a native app (OSX / Win) used as a Flash wrapper.

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jobu
"Hulu Desktop will work with Apple and Windows Media Center remotes."

Very exciting! I will have to try this when I get home.

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heresy
Does it buffer better than the Flash application? Their buffering is utter
crap, and I have a 12MBit ADSL2 connection.

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cubicle67
Does anyone have any idea of the timetable for allowing access to Hulu from
outside the US? I'd love to try it.

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paul9290
Just checked it out and think it's a great idea but it's UI in how it lists
shows is hard to see from far away on my 42" LCD.

I think the UI should mimic what is seen on Hulu which has larger thumbnails.

Pretty cool to see this though!

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klocksib
Mac and Windows at any rate.

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GeoJawDguJin
That's nice. Now let's see an official client for set-top boxes, and maybe
phones.

It's very buggy, by the way. Crashes within 30 seconds every time I use it.

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saturdayplace
Isn't this the same thing Joost did, only in reverse? Why go with a desktop
client?

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DTrejo
I wonder if they are moving towards the <video> tag.

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jrockway
Not enough Restrictions Management in the <video> tag, so this won't happen.
Clearly, without DRM, I am going to pirate low-rez Hulu feeds instead of the
un-DRM'd over-the-air HDTV stream. Right...

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quizbiz
Did hulu have "labs" before this? heheh

