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Show Life W E B S I T E O F T H E B5 September 1, 2008 W E E K hulu.com Hulu.com provides hundreds of television shows and movies to watch online for free. Hulu.com: a step in the right direction Popular TV Shows Featured Videos Popular Clips Popular Episodes I Ben Steele Ufe writer For years now, every traditional media source has been sweating under the pressure caused by the unbridled distribution of information across the Internet. CD sales are dropping, people are canceling their newspaper subscriptions, and all types of media are being consumed without the creators receiving proper payment. Apparently it's hard to justify dishjo&out a, whopping $390 for the complete 33-disc series of The Sopranos when you can get it for free on the Web, even if this vastly less expensive method is also vastly less legal. The problem is that these entertainment sources are businesses first. If they're not making money, they're not going to make a product. Hulu. com is the first step toward corporate-sanctioned integration of television and film into the Internet. The site's income is generated entirely through advertising. Take a one-hour episode and stick five 15-second commercials for Toyota throughout the length. The producers get paid, we get free TV any time we want with 10-times less advertising, and Toyota gets to have exclusive rights to our consumer compulsions fora full hour. Everyone's happy. Hulu's library is wide but incomplete. The companies involved are new in the area and testing the water, so while you'll find a few fulllength episodes from any given series, rarely will you find a full season, let alone a complete series. For the most part, the quality of each show is at or below 480p resolution, which is what you see on a normal broadcast television, so unless you've got your computer hooked up to your TV, you're going to be leaning in a lot closer than you normally would. Hulu needs time to grow. It's a good source to sate your media craving, but it is inconsistent at best. NBC and ABC currently offer HD streaming of their entire libraries, and other channels are trying to mature their own online projects, so until Hulu establishes itself as the popular source, these individual alternatives are probably preferable. W fhe 5impsons. Love. The Simpsons Hcner Evoiuron : Excerpt .LM'^.:ri 10 Ep. 12 121 49) ( 0 1 II) NBC TODAY Show: Ailmg Kennedy InsoireS Dems Except (03 35) More More " ' " V v . - "" ' ".!••( "Of-AV Fd'fl v ir <, Alw <*- ••'-•-. OC S-w.cr. C lf> U Excorpt (00 5 7) Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Bfog More Web Eyciuiivc Family Guy Over Family Guy Former Life of i M S3) '' -• •••• .. J-/ -w Off.fr 142 25) hulu.com TV HE Movies »GHTS hulu LIG Hulu only has four whole episodes of Monk (lead by Tony Shalhoub) online, buf entire seasons other shows (like Arrested Development) are available. INCLOSED SPAC ER NOISE IDGES DO ERMS BIRD hulu.(om Hulu is well-organized - you can view episodes and movies by what is most popular, or alphabetically. C O O L B E A N S Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD • Luke Hickman Life writer Back in 1998, I was an 18-year-old movie aficionado with a job that paid far too much. I wanted to upgrade from VHS tapes to one of the newer digital formats. There was DVD format, which was fairly costly and there was DIVX (Digital Video Express), a cheaper, CD-based format, but which required one to go online and pay per movie view - like renting. Not knowing which format would catch on, I decided to take a risk by investing in the DVD format. Thank heaven I did. DIVX didn't last one year. Over the last few years, we've been thrown into this boggle again. Until recently, there was a huge battle between HD-DVD and BluRay formats. Some stores would only rent or sell one format. Motion picture studios were contracted to print in one format. The Xbox 360 contained an HD-DVD player, and Playstation 3 with a Blu-ray. Unlike DIVX and DVD, this battle went on for years - until this year. In February, following Warner Bros., Netflix and Best Buy announced their discontinued support, and the coupe de gras hit HDDVD when Wal-Mart announced that it would also no longer sell the format. Because each format's players are so expensive (along with the discs themselves) and the outcome un- sure, this time around J held out in purchasing either format until the feud was over. Not that Blu-ray has won, but I finally have invested and it was worth every cent, all 40,000 cents I paid for it. If you're looking into getting a Blu-ray player, I'd recommend simply buying a Playstation 3. The PS3 costs the same as a Sony Blu-ray player. I see two advantages in buying the console. A PS3 can play video games as well as watch movies and, two, when connected to wireless Internet, the PS3 will automatically upgrade your player's software. Even though retail stores charge an obscene amount for Blu-rays, there are cheaper ways to go about getting them. Blockbuster Video has a large and growing selection of titles and they cost the exact same price as standard DVDs to rent. Amazon, eBay and other online retailers charge up to 50% less than Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Circuit City. To view the best image when using your Blu-ray player, you'll need a 1080p digital television and a good surround sound system. The clarity of the picture and the crispness of the uncompressed audio are second to none. Until now, I always thought that nothing could compare to seeing a movie in theaters. But when I brought the Batman Begins Blu-ray to a friend's theater room that had a 1080p digital projector, 1 was in awe at the silver screen experience I enjoyed in a private theater. Now, if only the cost of a 1080p projector would go down. |