Hulu is a serious competitor to In2TV.

Despite the buzz that surrounded the launch of Hulu, I really didn't expect the site to quickly become one of my favorites. I welcomed its arrival; one can never have too many high quality video sites, after all. I was more or less expecting a site that would regurgitate a lot of content already found on its partners' sites, however, rather than a site that offered an amazing mix of old and new television content, movies, and classic sports. I wasn't prepared for the awesomeness of Hulu. It blew me away.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Lost in Space, The A-Team, classic NBA games...wow. I can burn some serious time on that site, and I have. It's not like Hulu is the only site offering television content on the Web, though. AOL's In2TV is a similar site that I've written about in the past. I remain a fan of it, and to have both In2TV and Hulu and all the other video sites online right now makes this an awesome time for video mavens. We can think of Hulu and In2TV as being equivalent to TV channels for the Web. Your particular web channel lineup might include Joost, YouTube, and/or any number of other video sites, but regardless of the particular bunch of sites you use it is becoming increasingly clear that the high speed Internet user is soon going to be able to legally access more video content online than he/she can through TV. It's no wonder that many people are shifting away from cable and satellite TV given the richness of available online content; I don't see myself taking THAT step as long as I can afford cable TV, but getting off the cable/satellite grid is now a viable choice even for people who don't like to be bored.

As loyal as I feel to In2TV, I must nonetheless acknowledge that Hulu has leapfrogged ahead of the older site. Simply put, Hulu just works. It's offering a seamless video watching experience that replicates the television watching experience. High quality video, high quality content, high quality performance. In2TV just works most of the time, too, but the rest of the time it doesn't. The last problem I had with In2TV is that my videos would skip ahead after a commercial break, forcing me to miss a big chunk of whatever I was watching -- that's not exactly the best way to endear me to the advertisers! I'm also none too sure of how dedicated AOL is: for some reason, an episode of Babylon 5 ("Signs and Portents") on the English version of the site is in Spanish, and has remained in Spanish despite user complaints. It's one thing to build a great site, but it can only remain a great site if it is maintained. I unfortunately get the feeling that In2TV is on auto-pilot at the moment. Hulu might follow the same path eventually, but, for the moment, it has In2TV beat. Since they don't offer the same content, though, it makes sense to use both depending on what you want to watch. In this case, competition is awesome for the end user.