The Dag family watching season 2, episode 2 of Lost in Space. (they love this show)

Hulu has gotten a fair bit of sneering press. The bastard child of multiple networks, it's seen as an attempt to do something to stop the *ahem* torrent of TV content being shared informally.

I'm here to report that- you know - they might be on to something. I love having a library of shows at my disposal that I can watch full-screened from the Web instantly without waiting for a torrent- or having to worry if it's got enough seeds or if the tracker has gone kaput.

It actually just works. The video, though not HD or DVD quality is about what you would get with a standard Divx or Xvid compressed download. We experienced no buffering and smooth playback.

Yes, there are commercials - but at the moment there is only one per regularly scheduled commercial break. I'm sure though- if the service takes off this will increase.

The other downside is that Hulu is only available to residents of the United States. So how am I able to watch it from sunny Australia you ask? There's a really easy workaround tool for Mac and Windows called HotSpot Shield



Hotspot Shield gives you a VPN IP address that makes you look (to Hulu's servers) like you are inside the US. It really works well. It's free, and it does spawn a little banner at the top of the browser- but you can close it.

This doesn't mean I will stop downloading via other methods- they don't have all networks on board- nothing from Comedy Central, notably. But it's a good start- and a good place to go when you're not sure what you want to watch.