The Advent and Rise of Hulu

Launched less than 8 months ago, Hulu.com is well on its way to becoming the next YouTube. On TIME's top 50 inventions of 2008, Hulu.com made it all the way up to #4.

For those of you who don't know, Hulu is basically a high-definition version of YouTube. The difference is that all of the content is licensed but legal - the caveat is that it's ad-supported. But in my opinion, ads online are WAY more bareable than ads on TV because: 1) there's only 1 30-second ad per break and 2) even if you're not paying attention to the ad and end up missing a part of the show, you can simply skip back to the parts that you missed. No such luxuries on TV!

There is a ton of video media available on Hulu, ranging from promos, clips, full TV shows, and even full movies - all in HD! The TV show selection is rich, as I see many of today's and yesterday's top shows, including several of my favorites.

Hulu is growing as well. I noticed yesterday that Hulu even added a new anime channel. After sampling the channel for a bit, I was disappointed that the eps are dubbed, but the selection looks pretty good. I hope it'll draw in a lot of new anime fans.

However, it seems like Hulu vids are only available to residents of the US or Canada, so my international friends are left out. But if you can - I highly recommend you sign up for Hulu immediately!

As a side note - HD video via internet is definitely the wave of the future. In mere months, I've been spending a lot of time watching my favorite shows in HD - completely free (but ad-supported). 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report are my regular offenders. South Park and Late Night with Conan O'Brien are my less-than-regulars, but I still love 'em.