The Web Services Report

Hulu has debuted a long-requested feature--the ability to find out when new episodes of TV shows will be available to stream.

The video site, which is a joint venture of NBC, ABC, and Fox, calls the new feature Coming Soon. It went live Monday.

Hulu's new Coming Soon feature.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman)

The schedule of when TV shows will be released online has been unclear up until this point, leaving people guessing when an episode will be posted. This new feature solves that problem.

The update includes a few additional features. First, people can choose to get an e-mail reminding them when an episode gets posted. This is definitely helpful for those of us who are forgetful and don't use Hulu's excellent Queue feature. Also, Hulu now lets you place the embed code for an unreleased episode on your blog or Web site. I embedded this week's upcoming episode of "The Office" below to show how this feature looks.

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This weekend, starting Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT, Hulu will be live-streaming the Austin City Limits music festival. Hulu will be using its Watch Now application on Facebook, which has a live events box integrated so that users can discuss the concert as they watch.

(Credit: Hulu)

You can see the schedule of acts on the Facebook application page for the live-stream. Unfortunately, the stream features only a fraction of the acts that are playing the festival. In fact, some of the biggest acts, including Kings of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dave Matthews Band, and Pearl Jam are missing from the live-stream lineup. Luckily, we still get to check out some great acts like Thievery Corporation, The Decemberists, Ben Harper, and The Dead Weather. There's no real indication of how the selection was made and I'm certainly grateful that we are getting a stream at all, but I can't help but wish that the full compliment of acts would be available for streaming.

Men in Black playing on Joost's new iPhone app.

If ever there was a Web service that experienced a rapid fall from grace, it was online video start-up Joost. What started out as a much anticipated new service ultimately fell short of expectations and has recently struggled for attention. Friday, Joost released an iPhone app for its service that might be a game changer. Joost's iPhone app lets users stream and watch any of Joost's 46,000-plus videos for free.

Say what you will about Joost's library of content, the concept behind this app is fantastic. The ability to stream a movie, TV show, or other piece of video content on the go is great. I know the technology is nothing revolutionary--after all the iPhone has had a YouTube app, complete with streaming video, since the device launched. Even given that, when you load up Men in Black on Joost, it just feels like a whole different ballgame. This isn't a video of a dog on a skateboard anymore. This is real, Hollywood-produced content, delivered to your phone, for free.

I have not experienced the major hiccups that very early users, like MG Siegler did, so those issues seem to have been taken care of. I did notice some occassional stuttering of the stream over Wi-Fi. I am, however, disheartened by the lack of streaming support over EDGE or 3G. Joost requires a Wi-Fi connection to work.

Even though Joost appears to have a really slick UI (in many ways it does), it breaks some of the conventions for UI design set forth by Apple. Flicking to view the next page of search results does work. However, it does not slide over as you would expect, rather a spinning wheel is displayed while the next page loads. Joost also did not implement the incremental find that we have all grown accustomed to for searching.

For me, Joost's iPhone app falls just short of greatness. I really like what they are going for here, but I would certainly like to see more content added to Joost's library and support for 3G at the very least, if not EDGE. Even though the videos appear to choke at times, even over Wi-Fi, 3G should be more than capable of streaming video.

I hope that Hulu and Netflix, with their expansive content libraries, are paying attention to what Joost is doing because they are both prime candidates for this sort of mobile application. I get excited just thinking about having access to all of those videos (almost) anytime I want.

Everyone's favorite beer drinking techies, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, are now breaking down Digg's weekly top stories on Hulu with their wildly popular show, Diggnation. Thanks to a deal between Revision3 and Hulu, announced back in May, Diggnation is now featured on Hulu, alongside popular mainstream shows, such as Heroes and SNL.

Revision3's most popular web show, Diggnation, is now available on Hulu.

(Credit: Hulu)

While Diggnation has gained immense cult popularity, its availability on Hulu could help bring it to an even larger, more mainstream audience. Hulu (along with other online video sites) has definitely played a role in bringing even more popularity to shows in the past, with prime examples being the current It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and a renewed interest in the dearly departed Arrested Development. By putting this content in front of the eyes of a lot of potentially new viewers and allowing them to get into shows that they may never have seen before, these shows have been able to broaden their audiences.

Revision3 is leading the way in terms of becoming the poster child for web TV networks. Deals like this one with Hulu will only extend their reach. Click through for a Diggnation clip, courtesy of Hulu.

It would make sense that IMDb, the leading provider of movie and TV information on the Internet, would offer video on its Web site. After all, IMDb is a huge point of discovery of new movies for a lot of people, so the instant gratification of streaming that new movie that you just found is a big draw.

Previously, IMDb only offered videos in the form of clips and trailers. On Monday, IMDb took a step in the right direction and launched a selection of 6,000 full length films and TV episodes, available for streaming right now. All users have to do is click the big gold "Watch It" button as they are browsing through movie and TV pages.

Most of the content available is coming from Hulu, with a smaller portion from CBS, Sony, and independent filmmakers. (CNET is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

While it's anyone's guess as to why it took IMDb so long to realize the potential of streaming full length movies and TV episodes on their site, at least it's getting into the game now. This addition should keep users on the site longer instead of losing them to Hulu or similar sites as they search for the content that they just discovered.

This is really the first move that IMDb has made into the Web 2.0 space. VentureBeat's MG Siegler describes IMDb's user experience as being, "trapped in the 1990s." Being largely unchanged in a decade, there is a huge opportunity to introduce experience enhancing features to the Amazon.com-owned site here and it looks like they are moving in that direction.

Mentioned above, IMDb is also letting independent filmmakers showcase their movies on the site. This could provide for some much needed exposure for the indie crowd as IMDb drives people down the long tail of movies. Like the video content available from Hulu, IMDb's streaming service is limited to the U.S.

When Hulu launched a couple of weeks ago, one of their big promises was to give users choice about how they want their advertising. While this was not available immediately on launch, Hulu is rolling out this capability now on certain content.

Giving users a choice in how they view ads makes for a really great experience. Many people come from the philosophy that ads spliced into a movie ruin the flow, so they would rather watch the pre-roll trailer. Others don't mind the break that the short advertisements provide when scattered throughout the movie. I personally really like the idea of watching a movie trailer before a movie on Hulu. It's an experience that we are all very familiar with. Regardless of your preferences, at least Hulu is giving you some control here.

Hulu has been very creative with their advertising and I really applaud them for that. On the whole, most people would classify advertisements as being annoying. Combining this new user choice style of advertising with their overlay advertising and more traditional forms provides an experience that is more engaging than annoying.

I'm not sure how long this feature has been on the site, but I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere and Hulu was unavailable for comment, so I thought that I'd bring it to everyone's attention.

While the Writers Guild of America is on strike, Hollywood is giving us plenty of opportunities to catch up on content that we haven't seen. Fancast features full episodes of TV shows, TV listings, and news on TV, movies, and celebrities. Comcast's Fancast may look like the latest entrant into the web video scene, but the truth is that it packs a much bigger punch.

Much of the content for full episodes on Fancast is provided by Hulu, with additional content from CBS, MTV, and BET thrown in for good measure. The viewing experience is what you have come to expect from similar web video sites. However, Fancast goes above and beyond what sites like Hulu offer. They will give you TV and movie recommendations based on preferences that you have indicated and content that you have rated. If the TV show/movie is available on Fancast, they have a link to view it, but if they do not have it, they will provide localized TV listings or links to other sources where you can find it. Fancast allows for a good deal of personal customization and discovery and that is their killer feature.

In addition to these options, Fancast offers a really nice IMDB style service which provides a wealth of details on movies, TV shows, cast/crew, and actors. Along with that, Fancast will eventually provide users with the option of telling their Comcast DVR to record a show, much like TiVo does on their site and with Yahoo.

I have to say that Fancast has really nailed this site. Just about everything feels right, from the look to the usability. There is a ton of functionality and content here and it will only improve with time. It is clear that Comcast is very committed to making this project work. They took their time and did it right. This is such a huge site that does so many things that I cannot begin to discuss all of the features here, you will just have to check it out for yourself. I haven't even touched on Six Degrees, the feature that will allow you to explore connections between people, movies, and TV shows.

Today marks an important milestone in Web video. Hulu, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite online video sites, has started to add high-definition videos to its site. The most recent release of Adobe Flash Player added support for streaming HD, using H.264 encoding.

Hulu's HD Gallery is a little bit limited right now, only offering nine HD movie trailers, but we can assume that Hulu will probably be adding HD versions of other content in the future. Noticeably absent from the HD offering is the ability to embed the video in another Web page, which is a killer feature of Hulu, in my opinion.

Hulu is serving up its HD video in 1,280x720 and requires some beefy system specifications, including a 2.5 Mbps Internet connection. Hulu has a whole lot going for it right now, and it will only get better as the company signs more networks and studios. The embed feature is really great and it makes it easy (and legal!) to serve up your favorite shows on your Web site. For your viewing pleasure, I'm going to leave you with one of my personal favorites.

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NBC and News Corp.'s new Internet video site Hulu is finally seeing the light of day. On Monday, Hulu finally launched the private beta of its site, which includes almost 100 different TV series and movies. After a number of delays, Hulu has its site out the door in October, as promised.

Hulu is a Web platform for viewing and sharing TV shows, movies, and clips. The programming selection (via NewTeeVee PDF) for Hulu on launch is pretty impressive. Content providers include Fox, NBC, E, Bravo, FX, SciFi, USA, and Universal. Hopefully, we will start to see some more TV networks and movie studios jump on this, because I'll admit that I was a little disappointed to see that a couple of my personal favorites, Lost and Adult Swim weren't included in the list.

Sharing videos in Hulu works a lot like YouTube in that you can e-mail videos to your friends, or toss it up on your own Web site via the embed feature. Hulu actually takes sharing one step further than YouTube. You can set start and stop points on the videos that you are sharing, so if you only want to share one scene, or a particularly good 20 seconds of a video, you can do that.

According to TechCrunch, like many of the TV networks' online video solutions, unfortunately Hulu will only make the most recent five episodes of a given series available. Given that I do not know the specific terms of the deals that the companies involved have with Hulu, in my mind, there is no reason for them to start pulling episodes after five weeks of being on the site. As long as they can serve up advertisements with the videos, I think that it would be beneficial to the users, Hulu, content providers, and advertisers to keep those videos up. Although I would imagine that this policy would be different for TV shows that have already run their course, such as Arrested Development.

Hulu is looking very promising, and I expect to see a lot of content providers jumping on the bandwagon in the near future. Being a private beta, it is very likely that features and functionality will change significantly between now and the official public launch. That said, I'm putting downloadable videos (with or without ads), formatted for computers and portable devices on the top of my wish list for future releases.