Hulu (NBC/Fox Video Site) Launches in Beta

After more than a year of speculation and months of promises, the ambitious gamble by NBC Universal and News Corp. that they can create a major video service launches overnight on a variety of fronts. Dubbed Hulu, the video JV goes live with current and archived TV shows, clips and a cluster of feature films in a mix of private and public forms: small-scale private-beta destination portal hulu.com; distribution service Hulu on major portals, and shared/embedded video. Destination portal hulu.com starts with thousands of invites to a private beta designed to test scale and provide dynamic feedback. Feedback and suggestion options are threaded throughout the site, including the video player tools. Users can vote shows up or down, pop the player out of the browser for multitasking, share and embed video, see metadata. Until the private beta opens up, most Hulu users are likely to enter through one of five major portals with reach to most of the U.S. broadband population: AOL, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo and Comcast’s Fancast. Hulu’s browser-based, home-cooked video player is skinned to match the look and feel of each partner’s portal.
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-nbcu-nws-jv-hulu-launches-with-private-beta-open-distribution-sony-mgm-/

http://dmwmedia.com/news/2007/10/29/review-a-first-look-at-nbc-news-corp-s-hulu-dance

http://www.hulu.com/