Hulu Follow-Up

A few days ago I decided to really give Hulu a chance.  I haven't really used it at all for a couple of reasons.  First of all, it has commercials, and that's the whole thing for me -- I'm trying to avoid commercials!  And secondly, I haven't struggled for things to watch so I haven't had to use it as new avenue of content.

I browsed a little bit the other day -- I pretty much just approached it the same way I would approach Netflix.  I kind of thought to myself if I was in the mood for something new or something familiar, and then browsed the categories to find what I wanted.  It operates pretty much the same as Netflix.  I'm curious to try the cue -- can I cue individual episodes, or just whole shows (which is a drawback for Netflix)?

I felt like I could handle 15-30 second commercials.  My only other thought going into it was that I can handle commercials when I'm watching something that I'm not really watching -- something that's on in the background.

So I thought I would give Master Chef a shot -- I had enjoyed a couple of seasons of Project Runway -- and started with the first episode of Season 3.  Of course it started with a commercial.  Then after about 20 minutes another commercial.  They were only 15-30 seconds long, so they were tolerable.  Then they started coming every 7 or 8 minutes.  And one of the commercial breaks was like a minute and a half.  Ugh!  Now here's the thing.  They show you how many seconds are left in the commercial.  Research shows that this approach makes it more tolerable for the viewer, and I have to agree.  But it seems like each episode has a 90 second ad in the middle, with the second half of the show peppered with commercials every 7 minutes.

I gave it a shot, and it wasn't a show I was going to sit up and stare at for 45 minutes, so I could handle the commercials.  And the commercials weren't 25% louder than the show, like they often are on Comcast.  Cable TV commercials all have music and yelling and explosions, my God, and sometimes you're watching a soft program, and the commercials just blast in so loudly and make it entirely unwatchable.  So anyway, I was handling the commercials ok.  I watched the whole season over a few days -- I really enjoyed the show -- which is how I like to watch a show like that.  Start it, roll through it, and knock it out quickly.

I haven't used it since then, but I will definitely go back and give Hulu another shot. I still need to try to cue and see if it works like a playlist.