Hulu Desktop In Depth Look: TV on your Desktop

With the launch of Hulu.com, a little over a year ago, tv was brought to the internet and now Hulu is available right on your desktop with the launch of Hulu Desktop, a part of Hulu.com Labs. Hulu features thousands of your favorite tv shows as well as a few movies, all of which are available for free with a handful of commercials interspersed throughout.

Hulu Desktop brings the best of Hulu.com while adding an intuitive albeit somewhat confusing user interface, but after playing with the app for a little while it all makes sense. Upon opening the application, the video you were previously watching begins to play and you are given the options: Start Watching, Menu, and Switch Profile.

Diving into the menu system, you are given options for looking at Popular and Recently Added videos as well as TV, Movies and even Search. In actuality, the navigational system is very similar to that of it’s web version except it is all “live” and you don’t have to worry about pages loading or having to stop watching your video to find something else. The menu is easily accessible at all times by simply hitting the ESC button on your keyboard or by hitting the Menu button on your Apple Remote.

While watching a video, you are given a very familiar bar indicating your current position in the video but it has one very helpful feature that its web counterpart does not have. When putting your mouse over the timeline you are given a picture of what is at that position, something that is handy when looking for a particular part of a video. When you click on the video and pause it, a menu pops up on the left hand side giving you the feature that Hulu.com has, like Closed Captioning, Ratings, and etc. In that menu you will also find a help section which gives you all the keyboard and Apple Remote shortcuts, allowing you to watching your favorite videos without the aid of your mouse.

Overall, Hulu Desktop is an intuitive copy of its web-based brother, Hulu.com. The only real additions simply come from the app no longer being in your browser, things like not having to wait for pages to load and being able to have the video continue to play while you search the bowels of the menu system. So if you are an avid TV viewer and frequent Hulu.com regularly or just want the convenience of a desktop app, you can pick up Hulu Desktop for Windows and Mac at Hulu.com/Labs.

share permalink ping 2 Comments