Online video site Hulu emerges from private beta tomorrow. Of course, we'll forgive you if you didn't realize the service was in private beta. The site has given away thousands of invites, and users can easily embed videos on other sites, which has led to a cottage industry of Hulu cloning.

Over the past month, Hulu says its videos have been streamed over 5 million times, either from Hulu.com or from other sites, including Hulu clones and content partners like AOL and MSN.

When Hulu launched, it was basically a content distribution outlet for NBC and FOX. For the past few months,. Hulu has been busy signing additional content partnership deals, and tomorrow Hulu will add content from Warner Brothers, Lionsgate, and a whole slew of other networks and studios including sports content from the NBA and NHL.

All the content is professionally produced. Hulu ain't no YouTube clone, it's a place to watch full length movies and TV shows complete with 15 and 30 second advertisements. We've been checking it out during the private beta, and we've been pretty happy with the selection and video quality. We'd be a bit happier if Hulu would make entire seasons of TV programs available instead of just a few episodes at a time. But that would probably eat into DVD sales.

[via NewTeeVee]

We've been talking about Hulu a lot over the last few months. The online video site is a partnership between NBC and News Corp, and contrary to our expectations, it actually doesn't suck. The videos are high quality, there's not too much advertising, and most importantly, there are a ton of shows, both current and older that you actually might want to watch. Hulu also manages to avoid one of our pet peeves with many online video sites. If you're watching a video in full-screen mode, the screen doesn't shrink every time a commercial comes on.

The biggest problem with Hulu? It's still in private beta, meaning many people haven't been able to try it out yet. We can't give out an invite to everybody who wants one... but Hulu has given us invites for the first 2500 Download Squad readers who sign up.

Just visit our Hulu landing page, enter your email address, and you should be all set. And before people start complaining to us, yes we know, Hulu is only available to US residents at the moment. But those of you who are clever enough to know what a proxy server is might be able to get around this limitation one way or another.

Hulu has finally launched. And odds are you don't have access to it yet. The online video distribution service is a joint venture between NBC and News Corp, and as of today, it's open to anyone with an invitation. Hulu execs say for now, that just means a few thousand people.

We have to admit, we were a bit dubious when the companies announced they would be launching an online video portal. Why not just distribute their videos through an existing service like YouTube or Veoh? And can't you already watch most of these programs at NBC.com or Fox.com?

The truth of the matter is, Hulu is both a web site and a distribution platform. You can watch ad-supported videos at Hulu.com. The videos load in a Flash player, so you probably won't need to install any new software on your computer. And you can embed clips and full-length videos on your own site. Since the advertising stays intact, Hulu makes money no matter where people are watching the videos. Some of the ads will be overlays, while longer videos will likely have a limited number of interstitials, or what we like to think of as your classic commercial that comes on between TV episode segments.

Hulu will also be distributing videos through other portals like MSN Video and AOL Video. In fact, you can already find a handful of full-length TV shows from Hulu at AOL's site.

While you might think the service's 2 company pedigree means you can only watch a handful of videos like Prison Break, 24, Heroes, and Bionic Woman, those two companies produce a lot of video that wind up on other channels. For example, you can find Battlestar Galactica, Monk, Psych, and other shows that air on NBC-owned channels. And there's also a library of programming from the vault, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lost in Space, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There's also a limited number of movies available. You can check out complete lists of content from TechCrunch or NewTeeVee (PDF Link).

New episodes will probably stay on the site for about 5 weeks. It's not clear how long episodes of classic TV shows will be online. But that's what distinguishes Hulu from a good PVR or DVD player. It's more like video on demand, in that you're at the mercy of the programmers. If you decide you want to start watching a series from episode 1, by the time you get to episode 6, the first season may have been pulled off the site, forcing you to buy your downloads from iTunes, Amazon, or the DVD store.

Update: Thanks to Silicon Alley Insider, we got us some embed code. And it looks like once you embed the video on your site, you can access all kinds of other videos through the menu system. Check it out after the jump.

Update 2: And Hulu content is live on MSN Video.

[via TechCrunch]

Rumor has it that NBC and FOX are preparing to launch a private beta of their new online video site Hulu Monday. Or maybe Wednesday. TechCrunch reports that they've got a source who says it will definitely be sometime next week. Probably.

The timing would make sense. This weekend NBC pulled all of its (legally uploaded) content from YouTube. That move would seem to indicate that the network has a plan to offer up the same content somewhere else. And soon.

Silicon Alley Insider dug up a bit of information on Hulu's business model:

• NBC and News Corp are giving Hulu rights to "syndicate streamed, ad-supported NBC and News Corp TV entertainment video content."
  
• In other words, Hulu will be responsible for distributing video to sites like AOL and MSN. NBC and News Corp sites will, of course, be able to stream video of their own content as well
• Hulu is a streaming content site and has nothing to do with video downloads

We're still not entirely convinced that Hulu serves any real purpose for viewers. For the networks, sure, it looks like a great way to promote their content with clips, special features, and full-length streaming TV shows. Go to one site, and you can see content from two big networks. But without content from every network, we don't see why anyone would visit Hulu instead of NBC.com or Fox.com.

Starting next week FOX Broadcasting will offer the season premiere episodes of several of their televisions programs for free on iTunes. The plan behind the move is that once you download the first episode of the show onto your iPod you will be so enamored with watching your favorite programs on your tiny iPod screen that you'll pay to download the remainder of the season or at the very least you'll tune in to watch on television when the show airs.

Not all of FOX's programming will be available. Currently FOX's free iTunes offerings include American Dad, Bones, K-Ville, and Prison Break. ABC announced earlier this week plans to stream video through AOL's video portal, and NBC is looking at allowing users to download programming onto their computers for free a week after it's original air date. You can currently download several of NBC's new fall shows from Amazon Unbox before they even air.

[via TechCrunch]

NBC and News Corp are getting ready to answer an age old question: do people really go to YouTube to watch user-uploaded videos of cats doing stupid things or to watch illegally uploaded snippets of The Colbert Report?

The two networks are teaming up to launch a YouTube competitor that will focus primarily on professional content including content from NBC and News Corp shows. Today, the new site got a name: Hulu. As an acronym, it doesn't seem to stand for anything, but it's "short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself." Because that's what we've been looking for in an online video site.

Hulu is currently accepting e-mail addresses of anyone interested in signing up for a private beta, which is set to launch in October.

Leading photo blogging website Fotolog, has been bought up by the leading Europen interactive company Hi Media based in Paris, for a little less than the competition. But does it really matter when you can monetize the service better?

Fox acquired Photobucket for about $250 million earlier this year, and this deal with Fotolog was only for about $90 million. Sure Fox has deep pockets, but Hi Media might have scored big with this one. Now they only have to compete with Fox. The plans are to better monetize the current incoming traffic, as well as work a publishing element into the mix. So in the end, if Hi Media can easily make back the $90 million spent quicker than Photobucket, guess who is really in the lead. Look out for some interesting developments with Fotolog in the near future.

[via GigaOM]

While Viacom's strategy toward YouTube has been to sue the online video company for copyright infringement, NBC and News Corp (parent company of Fox) are trying to beat YouTube at its own game.

The LA Times reports the two companies are preparing a new site that will feature clips of NBC and Fox programs, including Heroes, 24, The Office, and Family Guy. Clips would be available through the site and would also be available for distribution by Yahoo!, AOL, MySpace, and Microsoft. The companies also plan to sell downloaded content from Fox and Universal Pictures. There's also a possibility that other content owners could jump on the bandwagon.

The big question will be whether this strategy can put a dent in Google/YouTube's dominance of online video. If the networks were simply setting up their own site, we'd be dubious. But partnering with companies like Yahoo! and AOL makes a lot of sense. While trying to drive traffic to a new site is tough, providing content to sites that are already popular is a great way to control the distribution of your material.

[via Tech Crunch]

Fox has lifted a page from the RIAA playbook in a recent YouTube takedown request. Under normal circumstances, when a user uploads a copyright protected piece of video to YouTube the copyright holder complains and the item is quickly removed. In this case, where a user uploaded Simpsons and 24 episodes, Fox has gone much further, asking a court to force Youtube to fork over the personal information attached to the offending user account.

We can safely assume Fox's only reason to go begging for a user's personal data is to file a lawsuit against the individual. Fox's VP of content protection, Jane Sunderland, is quoted in the subpoena claiming "irreparable harm" from the brief infringement, a note of panic that may be a bit over-the-top in describing the harm rendered by a poorly encoded Flash movie making a quick show on the popular video site. According to Google Watch, neither side of the dispute would comment on the matter; My first question would be aimed squarely at Fox, "When you sue John Doe, what are you planning to ask for remedy?"

We could be watching a whole new chapter in YouTube's evolution. I'm not encouraging the rampant sharing of copyright protected material, but I do think it's important to balance a user's right to privacy against the right of a corporation to protect itself. Dishing out a user's personal info over something that barely amounts to a blip on the piracy radar is totally overzealous.

Torrentfreak is reporting that BitTorrent has struck deals with several entertainment companies including 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (Comedy Central, MTV etc.), Palm Pictures and Starz Media, which will make those companies' movies and television shows available in BitTorrent's upcoming download store. Among the properties named are X-Men III, Mission: Impossible III, Prison Break, Laguna Beach, and South Park. These companies join Warner Bros. in partnership with BitTorrent, the launch of whose digital media store has been pushed back to early next year.

Last we heard Facebook was up on the block for nothing less than $2 billion, but now they're saying they were never interested in selling in the first place. According to SiliconBeat, the king of social networking sites for the college set has just accepted $25 million in funding from some Silicon Valley investors and marketing says, "It has never been our intention to sell the company." Facebook, according to comScore Media Metrix, is the seventh most-visited site on the web.

And over on the other side of the web, job meta-search site SimplyHired has raised $13.5 million from Fox Interactive and Foundation Capital, despite the fact that Google is hovering ominously around the corner with its own job search project.

What's going down at Under the Radar, the "early stage technology innovation" conference happening right now? News Corp. company Fox Interactive is shopping, apparently. According to ZDNet's Dan Farber, Fox's Ron Levinson revealed yesterday that he had just bought one of the companies at the event. Which company? Well, the ink isn't yet dry on the deal and Levinson isn't saying. Farber speculates that photo search company Riya (whose service isn't even in beta yet) is a good candidate. News Corp., you'll remember, bought MySpace last July for $580 million, and Levinson says he has a $2 billion "war chest" for buying companies and he would bet that he'd end up buying five more of the 32 companies present at the event. Head over to Farber's post for a video clip of the Levinson interview.