I love Hulu, that’s no secret.
And I’ve been antsy for Hulu access on my iPhone for a long time (since I started using Hulu, in fact), but I just can’t bring myself to get excited for the (allegedly) forthcoming Hulu app for iPhone. The main drawback of Hulu, for me, is that it’s all but tied to your desktop or laptop machine (Boxee and related hacks notwithstanding). If your connection dies or you travel somewhere without Wi-Fi, Hulu (like all cloud services) is just a pie in the sky.
“Hulu would be perfect,” I’d say, “if only I could download shows in my queue to watch on my iPhone while I commute to work on the subway.” Until Hulu does that, I’ve no choice but to purchase TV and video content from the iTunes Store and sync it to my iPhone (one could also go the less savory direction of downloading illegal torrents and converting them to iPod-compatible video files).
Ad-supported downloadable video is what I’m looking for. And I would probably be willing to entertain a nominal monthly fee for the privilege.
But an iPhone app - however “badass” it purports to be - that merely provides the ability to stream relatively-low-quality video over 3G or Wi-Fi connections that can in nearly all instances be found in just slightly-lower-quality on the native YouTube application, is just not all that interesting to me.
