It has been a few months since we cancelled Comcast. And I am enjoying TV more than ever.
At first we just tried to live with the free broadcast HD channels from the basic networks. This content is free and I can record it with our DVR but it is filled with commercials and there are some niggles with the antenna.
Then I started to really use Hulu. Much like Amazon's MP3 store, when Hulu first launched it was lame because they did not have much content. Now they have a great catalog.
Stargate Universe (syfy), Fringe (Fox), Modern Family (ABC), 30 Rock (NBC), Everything is Sunny in Philadelphia (USA)... All the major networks and some cable channels are showing full episodes on Hulu for free.
Forget the overpriced, crappy "on demand" stuff Comcast (and Apple and Amazon) wants you to purchase. Internet TV on Hulu is what you really want.
You create an account and add subscriptions to shows you want. When a new episode comes out, it shows up in your queue. Watch what you want when you want where you want. It works from a browser on any computer. It is a true on-demand system.
But wait! There is more to love...
The shows have commercial breaks but there is only 1 commercial. ONE!!! It is such a trip to stop the show for just 15 seconds. I love it and it really makes you aware of how much crap you are used to paying to see on cable TV.
The commercials are really different. First off, they are short. The longest I have seen is 30 seconds; the shortest is 5 seconds. Each show has very different types of commercials. SyFy was only showing me adverts for Google's Chrome browsers. The other channels often show public service announcements. The selections is pretty ghetto now but that adds to its charm.
The only complaint I have with Hulu as a user is that it relies on Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash kind of sucks. The image quality is good and the player interface is fine but it requires a powerful PC to show properly, especially HD.
Even though I have a nice video card with hardware acceleration for movies, Flash does not support hardware acceleration. (Adobe says "maybe next year" which is rather insulting at this point. What the fuck have you been doing all this time, Adobe?)
Hulu looks good on all of our Mac's but, ironically, my 3-year old HTPC (which is only for movies like this) cannot handle it without lots of annoying skipping. (By comparison, Netflix uses Silverlight and it works flawlessly on all our machines.)
If you arent yet, you should check out Hulu and show the market that you are tired of paying Comcast thousands of dollars a year for commercial-laden content that you dont really want anyway.
As I have said for a while, the only reason to pay Comcast is for sports. Sports over the Internet, especially for college, is an enormous untapped market. I still cannot believe that no company is out there making that work yet. Seriously.
