Hulu officially launched on Wednesday after an extended and very successful period in beta. 

Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corporation which offers multiple online videos. 

As listed on their blog, while announcing the launch:

“Today we are excited to leave our private beta and open Hulu.com to everyone in the U.S.”

So what is the Hulu experience? That depends on your expectations and starting point. I’m going to start with the technical experience since that is how I approached de-constructing the site.

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Are you still doubting that the business of television is changing at an incredible rate?

The role of traditional TV is being altered on a daily basis, as consumers ready themselves for a dramatic changing of the goalposts.

The interactive television company Ensequence has recently announced the results of an Harris Interactive online survey which shows that consumers are more than ready to change the way they interact with their televisions in 2008. 

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It’s 2008, and time to take a look in to the old crystal ball.

Hopefully we’ll be able to see in to the future, and predict the outlook for IPTV over the next year.

NewTeeVee has already came out with their list of online video predictions for 2008 and GigaOm has their list of the top five trends for the forthcoming year. 

And of course there is all of the product news around mobile and IPTV as well as content deals coming out of the CES show in Las Vegas, leaving us to ponder and wonder what’s in store for 2008?

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With the writers strike still in almost full effect, people are starting to wonder whether it’s actively affected people’s viewing habits.

Two pieces of reliable data are now pointing very clearly to the fact that it has, and that online video has increased its market share since the strike started.

Traffic To Video Sites Has Doubled

Number one: According to the BBC, Nielsen says that traffic to some online video sites has doubled since the Hollywood writers’ strike in October turned the TV into a wasteland of reruns and unfunny late-night talk shows (although it may be stretching things to call the Nielsen figure a data point, since I can’t find a report that has those numbers in it).

Number two: A report from the Pew Internet Research project, a reliable and independent research group, indicates that almost 50 per cent of those surveyed had been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube (up from 38 per cent last year) and daily traffic to such sites has doubled in the past year. The number of people who said they had been to such a site within a day of being asked almost doubled to 15 per cent.

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How has the Internet changed public broadcasting, if at all? It’s a question we should look at as the popularity and accessibility of Internet based television channels and online video streaming increases exponentially.

Back in the twenties John Reith, the first general director of the BBC said that their most important mission was to “inform, educate and entertain”. 

If Mr. Reith had defined this mission today, would he said something else? Has the internet changed the main mission of a license funded public broadcaster?

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A report by technology company Cisco Systems Inc suggests that, in 2008, 60% of all consumer IP traffic will be generated by commercial video services, or IPTV.

It also says 2008 will be the first year where consumer IP traffic will exceed business traffic.

According to the report, high-definition video services and high-speed broadband will see IP traffic almost double every 2 years through to 2011. It also predicts internet video streaming and downloads will account for 30% of all internet traffic in that year.

But as early as 2009, IPTV services bandwidth will eclipse that of internet video-to-PC streaming and downloads, suggests the report.

[Via xchange]

Is it possible that the iPhone could be a catalyst for a surge in mobile IPTV services? That’s what a recent study by the research firm Interpret seems to suggest.

According to the study, since the Apple iPhone’s release 63% of users have viewed videos on it in comparison to 28% of regular cell phone users.

Top of the touch-screen has of course been YouTube with over half of all iPhone owners claiming to have watched at least one YouTube clip on the device. Of this group 46% watched a music video, 34% watched a news report and 32% watched a movie trailer.

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