Rewind time a few years and network television content providers were unwilling to put their video content online. Fast forward to today and Hulu has announced that it will post season premieres from NBC before they’re broadcast on cable. It’s another sign that some traditionally resistant companies are learning that the web is a relatively untapped goldmine.

Some of the shows included in that lineup are Prison Break, Bones, House, Heroes, The Office and 30 Rock. That means a lot of people will head online to get their TV fix, especially after an interrupted season last year due to the writer strike (when writers realized that companies were making money online in greater numbers).

Hulu has so far focused on providing professional grade videos which distinguishes it from sites like YouTube which focus on allowing users to share homemade videos that have widely varying standards.

All of the shows debuting in the fall are available on Hulu’s fall premieres page, which breaks content down by week. It’s a slick way to outline content and allows visitors to salivate about upcoming entertainment.

In a nod to products like Tivo, which has had a season pass feature for a long time, Hulu allows you to subscribe to specific shows. The advantage over Tivo is reliability. Tivo will periodically “lose track” of a season pass from one year to the next. Hulu should be able to prevent that because its data is more controlled and sponsored by the content provider NBC.

You can subscribe to a series from our Fall Premiere Lineup page: Simply click on “Subscribe to episodes” for the shows you’re interested in, and new episodes will be added to your queue as soon as they’re made available through Hulu. If you want to be notified when new videos are placed in your queue, you can activate our once-daily Queue Updates from the Subscriptions tab within your Hulu Profile.

It’s encouraging to see the Internet continue its trend toward surfacing content, now Hulu needs to work on getting its video into the living room. The Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Roku Box, and Tivo all seem like likely candidates. Then we’ll have some real competition.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 8:57 pm under Internet, Online video.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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