Hulu has recently announced that it would begin inviting users to subscribe to a premium membership that is able to access whole seasons of certain TV shows, and a few other benefits. And even more recently have sent out the first wave of invites, which included myself. Here are my thoughts and some of the pros and cons of “Hulu Plus“.

Let’s Start With The Good Stuff

HD Video Option – This is my favorite benefit of all of them, the option to choose 720p HD video streaming, as opposed to only having the option between 360p or 48op. Being the type of person to choose an episode right before bed, having a high quality video to full screen makes the experience even more enjoyable.

Access To Whole Seasons – And multiple seasons I might add also. The trend that Hulu is able to display episodes of your favorite shows has been the 5 most current episodes. This obviously has limitations if you just discover a TV show you just can’t get enough of, you can’t go back and catch up on all the episodes you missed. Hulu Plus solves that problem. Now it is a select number of shows with this feature, but a feature none the less.

Mobile and Other Device Support – Now this one I will say up front, feels to me it is still a developing feature. But I’ll say more about that later. Hulu is now getting into the mobile game, supporting devices such as iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Also a good step in taking over how people traditionally watch TV shows, by supporting devices connected to your TV like Sony Playstation 3, XBox 360, Samsung and Vizio Bluray Players, and even some Sony and Samsung TVs. Allowing the ability to watch TV shows on demand on your TV. So no more needing to plan your schedule around a new episode airing. Just watch it on your new Hulu Plus enabled TV.

…And Now The Bad News

Advertisements – Ads are obviously nothing new to traditional television, and is not new to Hulu.com, but the fact that I am now paying a monthly fee, they should lighten up on the number, or length of advertisements they show per video. And maybe I think this is a con because of high expectations. I have noticed recently hulu has increased their ads, so I was hoping that Plus members would go back to seeing less ads like I’m used to.

The Price – This kind of goes along with the previous point, and some may argue that $9,99 a month for HD video and access to whole seasons of shows is fair, but because of the ads, I think it is not. If they aren’t going to lighten up on the ads, the lower the monthly price. Because when Plus subscribers’ wallets start getting tight, Hulu Plus will be the first thing to go. I understand  you pay monthly for a cable/satellite TV feed and that feed blasts you with ads all over, but sites like hulu are close to showing a new way of doing things that when you make it convenient for people to watch content, they will watch more content, and there by, advertisements.

Mobile And Other Device Support – I know I said this was a pro, but it’s more of the lack of support in this area is a con.  Being android OS fan, since there is no support for android devices, that is a definite thumbs down. However, articles have been popping up saying that an Android app is in development. And there is something to be said about those who are not in need of a new TV  or a bluray player, they have no option to view Hulu Plus on their TV. But that I can live with, but I think it’s worth mentioning.

Conclusion:

This is a great step for content consumption. We are getting closer and closer to two big things…watching whatever content we want, whenever we want, on the device that we already used to watching video on, and watching content on the go, in the mobile space. The idea of being almost anywhere and catch up on your favorite show, is almost mind blowing.

Currently, Hulu Plus is invite-only, put in your email address here and wait for the next round of invites. I feel that it will be soon.

The love for BP is alive and well in florida http://twitpic.com/23265m

RT @Bwana: Oh yeah! Firefox 4 Beta is giving me good vibes. I like what I see! http://bit.ly/fx4beta1

Will It Blend? – Vuvuzela World Cup 2010 http://youtu.be/-KHFA6ZuFTE

Life, Death, and Animal Crossing [COMIC]

I’ve been a user of digg.com since a little bit before version 2.0 of the website rolled out. And I remember those days. Staying up late searching the internet for some funny cat videos to submit in hopes that your submitted story gets on the frontpage. Or waking up first thing in the morning, just to see what cool, edgy stories to check out. Ah, yes. Those were the days.

But, I must admit, that brand new website smell wore off a few years later for me. The rise and death of myspace, the success and migration to Facebook, and now the allure of twitter, all this added up to not really participating in the digg community like the old days.

But now….all that has changed!

Ok, pardon the dramatic introduction to this part of the article, but I have been using the latest version of digg, and I have to say, it has brought back that excitement that I enjoyed in digg. So I’m back to diggin’ it up again. If you have an invite, follow me at http://new.digg.com/danohart

Best part of the new digg, the better integration of what stories is dugg or commented on by the people you follow. You still get access to the top news that the whole community of diggers are finding interesting, but what is featured is stories submitted or dugg by your friends or people that you think digg good stories.

A huge jump in advancements is trusted sites are given the ability to set up their RSS feeds to their digg account, so as soon as they publish a post, it’s automatically submitted to digg. So now you can follow the accounts of your favorite blogs, making digg a one stop aggregation of your favorite, up to date news.

Now there is simple stuff that you may find a good upgrade that are worth mentioning. Such as profile URLs will no longer include “users.” So instead of digg.com/users/danohart it is now will be digg.com/danohart. Again, small upgrade, but worth noting. And of course, the simplicity design that digg has been known for is still there, but has been adapted to the functionality of the new digg alpha.

The new digg.com should be available to everyone in the next month or so. If you don’t already have a digg acount, go sign up for one, and sign up for an invite to the new digg. It has already changed how I get my news.

After an update from engadget’s post about the 2.2 update, we have found that it seems only the press phones were being officially updated to Froyo, explaining the reason why only T-Mobile compatible phones are able to update. So that begs the question, is this the official Android 2.2 update? Or are they just testing the waters a bit.

A post over at intomobile.com speculates that it is not the full release and also states that “even if you’ve manually updated to the currently available Froyo build, you may still receive an OTA update when Google pushes it out.” Then once again a post leads to another question, WHEN’S IT COMING!?!!? I don’t mean to shout, but some froyo is sounding oh so tasty to me right now.

Doing a bit of digging (meaning:doing a search on twitter), the @androidDev account confirms that a test build has been sent out, and they should be sending over the air updates of the official release of Android 2.2 Froyo to phones “shortly”(view the tweet here).

So even though “shortly” isn’t a definite date or time, with @googleio saying that it will be here in the “next few weeks” almost a week ago, does make me think that my Google Nexus One will get some 2.2 goodness soon.

Stay tuned androidians….

DanoHart.com has a new look and feel, and has gotten back its wonderful, lovely feature of, yes you guessed it, Blog Posts!!! Hurray for Content Management, and Dano’s lack of laziness in the past two days.

Rather than making a big “to do” about how I’m going to start writing posts here, and promising that you will be informed about topics that interest me, and blah blah blah, I figure I would not. But I thought I should atleast say something. I mean, how rude is that? I think it’s very rude and should be avoided at all cost. That was some advice to you soon-to-be bloggers.

One thing though. I would like to give out a thanks to the incredibly talented, Mr. Sean “Bluefox” Blake for all his hard work and efforts in making the “D” logo for this site design. It blows my mind everytime I see it.

Posts will be typed, video’s will be edited, lives will be changed……..that is all.