TV Online? Yeah! Free and Easy Too!

I missed an episode of my favorite show, House, which is on Fox. Since the writers' strike they've played repeats, but not the one I wanted to see. When I checked out the Fox site, they offered a "video on demand" feature, but only the most recent new episode, and my ep wasn't the most recent. So now what? House is not always self-contained, in that some of the stories run in the background and advance from episode to episode, so if I miss one, I miss part of a storyline. What to do, what to do...

SO... I found a new site I wanna tell you about. It's called hulu, and it allows you to watch stuff from (mostly) NBC and Fox shows. And guess what? They're all free. And legal. Woo hoo!!!!!! How great is that? No more downloading "illegal" copies and fearing you'll "get caught." No more missing out on stuff everyone else remembered to see. No more feeling lost when you watch the next episode and not knowing what's going on.

I can't even remember how I first heard of hulu, but last night, when I was just finishing up some household jobs, it was nice to sit down and finally see the House ep I missed. I just called up hulu, searched on "House," chose which episode I wanted, and sat back and watched it. I was viewing it on my laptop and even made it full-screen, so it was like watching it on a regular tv, but up close and on MY schedule.

There is one proviso, though (although I found it only a minor annoyance): there are ads "supporting" your viewing of the show/movie you're seeing. On the show I watched last night the sponsor was Tylenol, and the ads were actually pretty cool: they seemed to have been developed for hulu, meaning they were subtle and they were short. There were probably about 6 all tolled, but each one couldn't have been more that 10 or 15 seconds. So they didn't really interrupt the story that much.

Wikipedia says hulu features shows that play on USA Network, Bravo, Fuel TV, FX, Sci Fi, Style, Sundance, G4, and Oxygen as well as the aforementioned NBC and Fox (and the CBS show I found). They supposedly have over 400 different tv shows and also a bunch of movies (I have yet to check those out).

So the next time you've missed "your show," or just want to catch something fun (and FREE), check out hulu.com and see what you can find. I LOVE stuff like this!