Monday, February 23, 2009

Watch Hulu Shows With Only One Commercial [Streaming Video]

good to know...

 
 

Sent to you by David via Google Reader:

 
 


Lifehacker reader Tommy noticed that by refreshing a streaming Hulu video page, he was offered the choice of watching one two-minute video instead of regular commercial breaks. Handy for slower connections and sly office viewing.

You might not save that much on total commercial time, but rather than having to re-buffer each video section between commercials, Hulu's offering lets you watch one two-minute clip, then stream a whole episode without having to stop again. It'll be interesting to see if this opens up downloading hacks down the road, since it would seem the whole clip would be cached in your browser. And, as Tommy notes, a two-minute front-loaded video is something you can choose to ignore and do something else with the time—like write a tip to Lifehacker!—and then get right to your condensed video far.

Some users might see the new commercial option right away, and it might take multiple refreshes for others to pull it up. But both Tommy and this editor eventually pulled up the option on a few different episodes (using Firefox 3.0). Tell us what you think of the new option below.




 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

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