hulu

Last week, I discussed five television shows that I would like added to Hulu, the online video-streaming service backed by NBC and Fox. Now it's time we shift our attention to film to find five classics that Hulu needs to add to its movies page.

Granted, movies are different. You need to invest more time if you want to watch some of your favorite films, and they don't have the ongoing sweep of a long television series. But there is a market for streaming movies online and because they are currently free on Hulu, users can start a … Read more

PARK CITY, Utah--As Hollywood stars drew crowds to the screening rooms here at the Sundance Film Festival, several Web media pioneers--celebrities in their own right-- also got the spotlight Saturday at a panel focused on the future of entertainment in the Digital Age.

Moderated by All Things D's Kara Swisher in her fourth such Sundance engagement, the panelists were Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings, YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley; and Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, which is NBC Universal and News Corp.'s joint online video venture.

Each had a somewhat different take on how they imagine … Read more

Hulu has quickly become one of the leaders in online video. Providing professional content from major networks and movie studios, the site has welcomed millions across the U.S. who want to watch streams of their favorite shows or movies online.

I'm certainly one of them. But after catching up on Battlestar Galactica and watching the same five episodes of The Office over and over again to memorize Dwight Schrute's lines, I'm left wanting more.

That's why I've compiled this list of five television shows that I'd like to see added to Hulu.

Curb … Read more

I've been seeing a lot of articles lately about Blu-ray's fuzzy future, how it's doomed, and how its success will be short-lived even if it does take off. Well, that may well end up being the case, but I gotta say, from where I'm sitting, there's a far greater probability that Blu-ray will do just fine--for a long time. And I'm not saying that because I'm a fanboy or a shill for Sony. I'm saying it because a lot of simple market factors point toward it doing just fine. Here are nine reasons why I'm right.

1. Digital downloads will not eliminate the need for discs anytime soon.

Let's address this first since this is the biggest factor that people cite when trumpeting Blu-ray's defeat. If you haven't noticed, here at CNET we spend a good amount of time covering new streaming video platforms and services and really enjoy testing these new products. Everything from Hulu to Netflix streaming video to Slingbox to Apple TV to Vudu all show promise. That said, all these products have some limiting factors, including lack of content selection, pricing hurdles, and most particularly, bandwidth issues, which affect video and audio quality. … Read more

Welcome to the Year of Fear. They say 2009 will be difficult, dangerous, maybe even disastrous. But, here at Technically Incorrect, we believe it will be the year that the seemingly impossible will be the most likely to happen.

So here are 6 things that we feel sure will occur in 2009. Notice the vital importance of advertising in each of these surefire occurrences.

1. FACEBOOK WILL BE SOLD TO A NETWORK TV STATION. Oh, guffaw away if you must. But some time this year the folks at Facebook will sit down and realize that they haven't sold much … Read more

In July 2001, Napster got shut down by the recording industry. Had the music moguls known how history would evolve over the next six and a half years, I wonder whether they would have tried a different tack.

I know, it's an endless bar debate. But watching the music establishment play catch-up, with its continuing series of zigs and zags, don't you just know these guys wish they had the opportunity for a do-over? Who wouldn't? But life doesn't work that way. So instead, it's been a slow (and unsatisfying) grapple with technology.

A few … Read more

On Saturday, Warner Music pulled all videos involving its music from YouTube after failing to reach a licensing deal with the Google-owned video site. (More accurately, it asked YouTube to pull them, and YouTube was forced by law to comply.)

Now, Silicon Alley Insider reports that Warner and the other three majors--Universal, Sony, and EMI--may be in talks to create their own YouTube competitor.

Before you scoff, recall the lesson of Hulu. First announced in late 2007 by NBC Universal and News Corp, Hulu was originally scorned as the "clown company"--everybody assumed that these old media dinosaurs … Read more

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

A year before the U.S. economic crisis came to a head, Debra James of Oakland said she saw the writing on the wall and decided to trim the household budget. Topping the list were things like satellite television.

"I could tell the economy was getting sluggish in the summer of 2007," she said. "So I decided we needed to make some cuts, so that if things got worse, it wouldn't be so painful."

Indeed, … Read more

NEW YORK--Not so long ago, Web video start-up Joost was looking a lot like the Waterworld of Web 2.0.

"We had a company and a product," the company CEO Mike Volpi said here in an interview at Joost's office, a brightly lit space a few blocks from Union Square that the company moved into several months ago. "It didn't work particularly well. We needed a new company, culturally, product-wise, target market wise."

Volpi now hopes that he can steer Joost's trajectory away from something like one of those big-budget movies that tanks … Read more