Timely analyst thought pieces on issues pertaining to digital media, home networks, and consumer electronics.

For those of you who haven't tinkered around with Hulu, I would suggest (if you live in the U.S, that is, the only geo its available at the moment) going over and trying it. Today it comes out of beta and is open to the public, and I think unless the site and its partner sites get crushed under the weight of new users streaming video, I'll think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I've tinkered with the site some when it was in beta and this morning since it opened its doors to the public, and I've yet to have a poor viewing experience. The player, which is a proprietary one, launches seamlessly within the browser and plays the video without hesitation or hiccups. I've changed from 360p to 480p midstream and didn't have any problem, as well launched full screen and then gone back to in-browser play without any hesitation.

In an interview, the CEO Jason Kilar said the Hulu site has been stressed tested quite a bit within the GE and News Corp fold (the parent company of NBCU and Fox), which meant having to have up to 200 thousand employees signing up within a one or two day time frame.  Kilar also said he expects the Hulu site to generate quite a bit of traffic, but that he and the company are perfectly comfortable knowing that an episode of 30 Rock will be watched in full within the walls of Yahoo or another partner site.

This is the right mindset. I think that there will continue to be destination sites like Hulu that attract traffic with rich content, but why not keep people at their home base if they choose to do so?  Sites like Yahoo, MSN and others are very hungry for good content and I think that Hulu will help provide some of this. Utlimately, the Kilar thought that 50% of the video will be watched directly on Hulu and 50% on partner sites.

Coppergate Acquires HomePlug AV Assets of Conexant
Author: Michael Wolf
Research Director, Digital Home
Posted: Wed, 7 May 2008 13:32:58 EDT

HomeGrid: Believe It or Not, Another Physical Layer Home Networking Standard
Author: Michael Wolf
Research Director, Digital Home
Posted: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:06:19 EDT

NAB Wrap-Up: Why NAB is Now the Most Important Show for Convergence (and not CES)
Author: Michael Wolf
Research Director, Digital Home
Posted: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:25:04 EDT

The Blockbuster Box? No, thank you, but...
Author: Michael Wolf
Research Director, Digital Home
Posted: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:07:17 EDT

FubuHulu? Facebook Meets Hulu and I Like It
Author: Michael Wolf
Research Director, Digital Home
Posted: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 18:49:32 EDT