Hulu Vs. Youtube

I have never been a huge fan of Hulu. I simply have never felt that it adds anything to my media experience online. If I want to watch a current network show I can just go to the specific website I need, and if I want to watch past seasons of a show only a few episodes are available. With websites like sidereel, surfthechannel and fastpasstv I have the ability to watch all the Television I want without commercials.

With that said recently I have watched two Episodes of Friday Night Lights on Hulu because I find that living with four guys and having slow internet streaming illegal television is just not as easy. So Hulu is nice if you are lucky enough to find the episode you need, but I think that the Hulu experiment is failing. Not to mention Hulu does not work internationally so is certainly limits usability.

On the other hand I think youtube is a great idea. I am not a avid user because I do not have a user name and a have never contributed material to the site I think the concept is great. Music playlists at parties have been changed because of it and simply just sharing of life and culture that is part of the experience. When I was abroad I was shown so many new and funny things on youtube because everyone has their own youtube video that they find hilarious. While, I may not use it that much I understand the role of youtube somthing that I usually cannot say about Hulu

Blog #5: Hulu and YouTube

I watch all of my television on TV, so I end up using a lot of Hulu and YouTube. However, like many of my classmates, I find that I use them for different things as they are very different websites.

I usually watch most of my shows on their network websites, as long as they work well for me. I decided to watch an episode of Glee on Hulu. I actually always watch Glee on Hulu rather than Fox, basically because I've found the viewer to be user friendly and work better than that on Fox's website. I watched my episode, and it was done. After that I thought I'd watch a little bit more, so I found a random clip from SNL. This lead me to watch a few more that were listed down at the bottom. Still, all that was suggested to me were more SNL clips.

On YouTube I watched a clip that somebody linked of me of some cool Halloween lights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUAV_1jBJB4- check it out. The suggestions lead me further and further away from the original video. I was able to check out a few other videos added by the user, which included lights with different songs. This eventually led me to watching a bunch of different videos with the song "This is Halloween" played over different movies and all sorts of stuff. (Halloween is my favorite holiday, apparently I'm not ready for it to be over yet). Still, by continuing to click through, I was eventually connected to videos of SpongeBob Squarepants, to random joke videos, to the Lion King. I'm not even certain how some of these things get suggested, but the way YouTube is set up I could end up spending hours discovering new videos.

I think this is possible with YouTube because of the diversity of content. As many others have pointed out, anybody can upload videos to YouTube, whether they are professional or amateur. With this any person can have a hit video or become a famous YouTube star. Professional content tends to not show up on YouTube as often as Hulu. This is due to the fact that Hulu has agreements with all of the owners....some seem to on YouTube, yet there are countless times where I will try to access a link somebody sends me on YouTube, only to find that it has been removed due to copyright infringement. That can be another problem with YouTube- where individuals can claim ownership of certain videos even when they do not have it. Overall, I'd say Hulu is where I go when I want to watch a show, and I often go to YouTube for entertainment, watching music videos, finding long lost content such as shows I watched when I was younger or that I know will not be uploaded by the actual owner, or sometimes even to find certain shows that I know Hulu does not have.

Blog 5: YouTube and Hulu

I decided to compare and look at these to video websites by watching movie trailers. I do not use either website often but I am vaguely familiar with what each has to offer. First I went to YouTube and searched for the upcoming movie I want to see, "127 Hours trailer". Here I found a number of different links and videos, from "Official" and "Full Length", etc. My search yielded 1240 results, so I decided to start by watching the ones with the most hits. On YouTube I found that the quality is very mixed. The first trailer I watched was clear but the next two were blurry and not as clear. Also, I found that my videos kept on buffering and took time to load. This was frustrating as I kept on hitting pause and waited for the videos to load. One thing I found helpful and useful on this website was that it would show me related videos and recommendations on the side of other similar videos. I was able to click around and watch a number of trailers and clips from the movie.

I then went on Hulu and saw that there was a tab right on top labeled trailers. This was a very simple process for me as it only took me 2 steps to click trailers and then scroll down and click on 127 hours. Here the website gave only a few options for trailers to watch but all were official. I found that on Hulu the quality was guaranteed to be good and there was no problem or wait loading the videos. To me the simplicity and few options made my experience better on Hulu. For what I was searching for Hulu was definitely easier and more reliable. YouTube however offers more of a variety and freedom on the site. When I want to watch something that is less "official", I would definitely go to YouTube, the content is more user based- uploaded by whoever and a range in content, but Hulu's quality and convenience is very appealing.