Anyone else poke around hulu.com yet? Here's their story:

I looked around and saw some neat stuff, like Ed O'Neill's short-lived L.A. DRAGNET and the late-80's version of DRAGNET, as well as old shows like the HULK and BUCK ROGERS.

I found myself glued to it last night, watching episodes of The Dana Carvey Show(alas, no pilot episode, so no Clinton puppy breastfeeding), which holds up remarkably well. I sampled the WKRP episodes and they seemed to still be missing all the original music. The commercial breaks are marked so that you know when they're coming and the watermarks are fairly unobtrusive. Hopefully more content will be added soon - specifically more content not already available on DVD.

Thanks for letting me know about this site. I just watched the new episode of The Simpsons from a couple of weeks ago that my Tivo didn't record because the stupid NASCAR pushed it back about 30 minutes. ("The rat symbolizes obviousness!")

Every day, we get that much closer to the Internet and TV becoming pretty much the same thing.

Thanks to this board, I started checking this out myself. I finally have a computer and a connection that can handle streaming video.

I think it's pretty cool. I think it works much better for tv than movies. and in fact haven't tried to watch a movie on there. But there's stuff there, if you're interested.

It's very well suited for classic tv, though. They have a fair amount of interesting things -- some new episodes rebroadcast and complete seasons of classic stuff. Now, personally, I haven't really had any urge to check out "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" (sadly, apparently no one is), but it's there, if you want it. And I would guess as time goes on they'll toss more of everything on.

Right now I've been alternating between certain episodes of "Alfred Hitchock Presents" (pretty good, I may post on this once I'm done with what I want to see in the first season) and the run of "American Gothic" (again, pretty decent, but sad how the CBS "look" from this period -- early/mid Nineties, right? -- made everything look like "Walker, Texas Ranger". )

Yes, it's all from "A". Methodical, thy name is Doug. I can tell you "A" also boasts the first season (maybe season two is up now too) of "Alias Smith and Jones", which I've long wanted to check out, and I think the full run of "Arrested Development", one of the few sitcoms I've ever really liked. Yeah, I don't like comedy on tv all that much, either.

(I also tried a couple episodes of "Astro Boy" but, um....not for me, I guess.)

You can't download the video, it's streaming only. There are commercials, but for the most part they seem to be where the normal breaks were, so I can't hold that against them. Aside from some stuttering on the second episode of "American Gothic", I don't have any complaints about the quality of the video. (And that may be from the source -- I was reading some reviews of the "American Gothic" dvds and some were complaining about the quality there.)

I don't know if it's for everyone, but for somebody like me, who'd like to see this stuff but doesn't really want to commit to owning or renting the dvds (noncommitment, thy name is Doug) it's a good option. I wish it luck.

doug

It's a great selection, but I've tried watching on two laptops (one of which is quite new with very decent speed, memory, etc) and both times I've found it too choppy to actually enjoy. Am I the only one having this problem?

Most streaming videos are like that on my computer. I've always assumed it's a memory issue.

Depending on what the stream is encoded as, it's usually the graphics card or processor. Making sure you have the most up to date codec can sometimes help.

My computer has video processing built into the motherboard rather than an external video card, and that usually means mediocre performance. I can't watch Hulu full-screen without the frame rate stuttering to 10-15 fps. Netflix, however, is silky-smooth when viewed full-frame. I suppose it has something to do with the different codecs being used by the services.

My problem is sound which I can't make quite loud enough. I have been enjoying the site however. And today a friend sent me another one:

http://www.fancast.com/full_episodes

They have "Lou Grant" but for some reason it states all the episodes will expire in 1 day...no way can I watch twenty odd ep's in the next 24 hours!

Thanks for the link, I just watched the Blue Boy episode of Dragnet!

Alas these sites don't work for those of us outside the US. However, when I tried to watch "Lou Grant" I was informed I could buy it on DVD, which was news to me and indeed isn't the case as it still remains unreleased...perhaps it's in the pipeline?

If you're out of country and really desperate to use the service, find an anonymous public proxy based in the States and set up your browser to use it (just while you're using the video site). I've done it with proxies in the UK occasionally when there was some video on the BBC site I wanted to look at. It can be a pain finding one that works, but if you're desperate enough it's worth the effort.