Hulu Debuts Labs, Headlined By Desktop Application

Hulu today announced the opening of Hulu Labs, a section of their site dedicated to new features still in beta testing to improve the average user’s viewing experience. This announcement includes some exciting additions to one of the best sites on the internet.

The main attraction in this announcement is no doubt Hulu Desktop. A downloadable application for Windows and Mac OS X, it allows you to view the TV shows and movies on Hulu in full screen mode, removed from your web broswer, and controllable by the Mac or Windows computer remote. The interface is familiar to those who have viewed videos on Hulu’s website, so there’s no new learning to be done. Overall the experience is much more similar to a TV, so much that I forgot I was watching videos streaming from a website.

In addition to the desktop app, there is a new box that displays personalized recommendations based on your viewing history, a feature that will sort shows by their original air date, and a widget that lets the user customize the video embedded on his or her website.

The new section is apparently based on feedback that Hulu has received from its users over its life span. As a frequent visitor of the site, I was surprised and pleased to see these new features and I hope for some more in the future. I think with this announcement we will begin seeing even more of a trend of people canceling their cable TV and relying on Hulu alone for all their favorite TV shows.