Thing 19 - Hulu

I have never before watched any shows on Hulu. I had a vague idea what it was before this exercise, but no real familiarity with it. When I went to the Hulu website for this "thing" I was definitely amazed at the quantity and variety of videos available, I had no idea the collection was that vast. I looked around at what was available and eventually decided to watch part of the tv show Chuck, the same episode that I had watched the evening before. I chose to do this so that I could truly compare the experience to watching it on tv. I watched about 15 minutes of the episode. There was a commercial before it started and a 25 second commercial after about 12 minutes. While I think it is great that this is available, I don't think it is better than watch something on tv. The picture and sound quality is definitely not as good as at home (although the sound degradation could also be due to the shoddy headphones at my desk). It's very conveient that the commercials are so short, however, I don't feel that this beats recording a show on my DVR, watching it on the big screen, and skipping the commercials altogether when going backt o watch the show. I do think Hulu is great for either someone who doesn't have DVR capability or doesn't have television/cable access. I can see myself using Hulu only in two scenarios: one would be if for some reason I did not catch something on tv or DVR that I want to see, and the second would be to watch something that did not come on tv. Personally I wouldn't want to sit and watch an entire movie on my computer, unless on a plane or something of that nature. However, I do have the capability of streaming something from my iPad through a connection to my tv screen, so I guess I could essentially download something from Hulu and watch it on the big screen...I still don't foresee this being a regular occurenece for me. However, for libraries overall, I think an eventual decline in DVD circulation is likely, but not necessarily something we should expect immediately. I think we may see more people in the future download things online and watch them in libraries, however, as long as there is a large number of the population without computer/internet access in their homes, we will continue to see DVDs circulate.