Embedding Hulu

I put up the Triumph at The Belmont video that was on Conan on Thursday. When I saw it, I knew it was something I wanted to share. When I went to Hulu it was available as its own clip.

I still would have been able to share it since whole episodes of Conan are on Hulu. When you choose to embed or share you can select the start and end point of your clip. I think this is a really great feature. I’m sure I’ll become an expert at sharing segments of Colbert. I’m not sure if there is a different in time available between clips and episodes. The episodes may expire more quickly than the clips. Maybe clips don’t ever expire? I’ll have to keep my eye on it.

Another very nice feature is that the video is widescreen. That’s great for widescreen shows such as Conan. The problem I see with this is, say you want to share a Family Guy clip. Family Guy is not widescreen. It can’t be that difficult to provide different sized players. Still, I’d rather have the widescreen and lose the horizontal space.

My biggest issue is that when I clicked play on the clip it rolled a 30 second commercial to start. I don’t mind the commercials when I’m watching a whole episode of something on Hulu but if the clip is only 4 minutes long, a 30 second commercial to start is a bit much. In my opinion, with any embedded clip a commercial to start is a bad idea. If its not something I’m very interested in, I’m not going to keep watching. Plus, with NBC being part of Hulu, isn’t just the clip from Conan itself an advertisement to watch Conan?

I’m a big fan of Hulu so far and now that they have The Daily Show and The Colbert Report I’m not as worried if my DVR decides to skip things anymore.

The one question I have left is, how long will this clip be active?