Fox and NBC Universal little video site Hulu.com is up and running. It’s been in beta for about 4 months and went live this week. If you haven’t signed up yet what are you waiting for? It’s pretty great. I’ve spent the last couple of nights catching up on shows I’ve missed.

The site has both TV shows and movies that are free to watch. I found the TV show database to be pretty good so far and according to Jason Kilar the sites CEO it is just going to grow. It’s got everything from some great new shows like The Office and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Some old classics like Doogie Howser M.D and my favorite The A Team. Even some great cartoons like Exosquad. It’s all paid for by ads so you will have to sit through 3 commercials for a 22 minute show, which is less then a real TV show unless of course you use Tivo. The quality is really good and except for a couple of buffering incidents it runs great.

Right now there are some shows that don’t have their entire catalog up yet hopefully they will soon. The movie side of it isn’t as extensive yet but still no bad at all. Although I haven’t done it yet you can cut parts out of any show or movie and share it anywhere. If this little Hulu thing works out it could put quite dent in the DVD sales of classic TV shows.

With nothing good on actual TV right now it’s the perfect time to try Hulu and catch up on episodes you may have missed.

Check out the video after the break

More…

If you caught X-play last night on G4TV then you were treated to a little eye candy. Of course by eye candy I mean that little hottie Adam Sessler. If you were able to take your eyes off him for a second you got a nice little Rainbow Six Vegas 2 preview. Game looks pretty good. They had Chris Masters, one of the designers dropping some of the usual knowledge, i.e. better A.I., more weapons, rewards for playing the game well, and of course the improved CO-OP which will now include the entire story (THANK GOODNESS!!).

All thats well and fine and frankly stuff we’ve heard already. Mr. Master’s also let us in on the fact that the Rainbow Six boys will not have a trilogy of Vegas games. He said this would be the last game based in Vegas. Of course they will be making more games but they won’t be in Vegas. I bet they’re gonna follow CSI’s lead and go from Vegas to Miami to New York.

You may have also seen that Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is number 2 on the 360 sells list on pre-orders alone so I guess you guys are excited about this game, I know I am.

Well the big game is over. It was a big upset. That pretty boy Brady got smacked in the mouth alot ( that was awesome). The Giants won.

But thats not the best part, right? The best part is the commericails, at least if you don’t like football they are right? So how was last nights ads? Personally I was disappointed, there were a couple of funny ones, E-trade and Bridgestone (would have liked the Bridgestone one more if he’d actually hit Richard Simmons but I guess that would have been in bad taste) were my favorites. The beer ads were pretty good as usual, Bud Light with Will Ferrell as Jackie Moon was my fave “SUCK ONE!” I liked the Doritos ad with the giant mouse busting through the wall but that was a repeat although I don’t remember it. My question is if your gonna spend 2.5 million on a Super Bowl ad, why wouldn’t you have a new ad for the spot?

The best part of the night though were the movie ads. It’s official “I CAN’T WAIT FOR IRON MAN!!!!” What a great little trailer that was. We’ve been screaming about Iron Man allot around here and that trailer just raised the hype for me. The other movie I’m pretty excited for is Wanted. Maybe that movie has been on your radar but that was the first I’ve seen of it and WOW!!!! It looks pretty darn cool.

Another Jumper preview was there. YAWN!! Jumper looks crappy and I just hope that Mace Windu gets his revenge on Darth Vader. Is anyone looking forward to Wall-E? I haven’t actually seen anything from the actual movie but right now the best part for it was having Woody and Buzz Lightyear on the commercial.

All in all I didn’t think it was a good year for ads. What did you think? What was your favorite? Let us know.

If you haven’t been keeping track, there’s this writer’s strike crap that’s currently ruining television. It’s been going on way too long. The thing is that it’s not just effecting the studios and the writers, but all the other people involved in creating and running all these television shows. So, rather than continuing to screw all these innocent non-writers, some shows have decided that the show must go on, even without the writers.

Every late show has returned, with writers (David Letterman and Craig Ferguson) or without writers (Conan and Leno. Notice I don’t include Carson Dailey, and Jimmy Kimmel). Since David Letterman owns his own production, ie Worldwide Pants, he has made deals with his and Craig Ferguson’s writers. However, Conan and Leno aren’t able to make any deals, only their studios can do that. Both Letterman and Consie (that’s Conan O’Brien) are sporting “writer’s strike” beards, you know in support or something.

All these people keep on saying how they support the writers, well I guess I’m one of the few that doesn’t. I mean it’s January and I’ve got no 24. Thank a lot writers. I’ve been watching Conan since he’s back and I think the show is just as good, if not better, without the writers. Jay Leno is still doing his monologue and it’s still just as funny and sucky (that’s not a word) without writers. As for David Letterman and Craig Ferguson, well, they sucked before the writer’s strike (especially Ferguson), so they still suck but now they’re paying the writers more money.

What all this says to me is that the only thing we really need writers for are shows like 24 and Heroes. Shows with plots and stories need writers. Jokes are a dime a dozen, and if you have a great host like Conan, or John Stewart for example, they pretty much are the show. And as I write this article about how useless writers are, I can’t help but think about the irony. Also, Fox, I’m available for scabbing if you need some writers to get 24 back on the air.

Beards!

Here it is. Not that it’s really anything you haven’t already seen from season 3 clips. Though, I did see a cow in the trailer. Don’t know what that’s all about. Hope season 4 is better than the last.

Crash!

It’s a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR, not like you really need a picture of the exact car, you could just look at a Mustang. But don’t think that’s all. The car, I’m sorry, KITT, can be operated remotely, by remote, from a remote location of up to a mile away. Seriously though, this car is remote-controlled. In real life, not in the movie. There are a total of three cars, all Ford Mustang Shelby’s. The first is the Remote version, the second is the everyday car called the KITT Hero, and the third is the KITT Attack (sounds dangerous right?), this one is for the high speed chases and action scenes and is driven be a stunt driver.

This is the new Knight Rider. Really? What 80’s B-Movie did they dig him up from?

The new Knight Rider is a 2 hour television movie and airs on Sunday February 17th at 9 p.m. eastern time on NBC. The voice of KITT (that’s the car) is Will Arnett (you know, Michael’s brother George the magician from Arrested Development). The lead goes to Cold Case actor Justin Bruening. The others really aren’t worth mentioning so I’ll just link to the original story at TVSquad.com. Oh, and for all those purists out there, David Hasselhoff will be making a cameo in the movie.

Hoff!

X-Play is one of the longest running shows on G4TV, previously on Tech TV, previously on ZDTV. Heck, Adam Sessler has been around since the beginning. So, why does that matter? They’re getting an extreme show makeover. X-Play will be expanding to include more than just reviews and previews. They’ll be adding gaming news, interviews, stuff from other G4 offerings like ‘Cheat!’ and ‘The MMO Report’, and all the other things a well rounded video game show should have.

When does this all happen? Well, I’m glad you asked. The new format will premiere early next year, January 14th to be precise. Not only will they be changing the show, but their site and blog will be getting an overhaul for the better. Oh, and Morgan Webb is still on the show too. In case you needed another reason to watch.

Check out Kotaku for more details.

Boom!

According to an article from Rueters, AT&T, a reseller of DirecTV, will be discontinuing it’s offering of DirecTV’s satellite tv service in the first quarter of 2008. It seems they may prefer to sell EchoStar. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett speculates that “DirecTV’s dependency on AT&T is above 10 percent and that it would likely see a drop-off in subscriber growth as a result of the AT&T move.”

There is also some reason to believe that AT&T may actually continue selling DirecTV service and another service together. Seeing as how AT&T has said they want to expand their U-verse video network to 30 million homes by 2010, up from the 17 million target for the end of 2008.

Boom!

The writer’s strike is going on two months now and there’s no end in sight. Thanks a lot Writer’s Strike of America, you’re ruining television. So what can you do to pass the time? SuperLame has the answer with some great online alternatives to tv’s upcoming reality onslaught.

Joost - 19,000+ TV shows, 390+ Channels. They’ve got shows you’ve probably heard of, like MTV’s Punk’d, Ren & Stimpy, and CBS’s hit drama CSI. Then there’s a slew of older, lesser known, and obscure shows you may not be familiar with. All of it comes in a nifty little program you download and run all for free. They do have ads, but it’s not that bad, usually one short ad before a show.

YouTube - Now here’s a little site you may not have heard of. Okay, so we all know about YouTube. It has everything on it. From original content, to commercial stuff people upload, there’s something for everyone. The best thing is, they have so many users the content is constantly being updated.

Chime.tv - This isn’t a video content site so to speak, it’s more of a aggregate for video content. They pull video from all the biggies on the net. Places like YouTube, Veoh, MySpace Video, and more. They also put it in a very pretty and easy to use Web 2.0 package. It’s one of my favorites. And somehow the videos seem like they actually load faster than on the site they originate from.

Channel 101 - You may have seen the short lived sketch comedy show Acceptable.tv on VH1 last year. Well, the show was canceled and the guys behind that have returned to their original project Channel 101. It’s great for off the wall sketch comedy and crazy web shorts.

Podcasts - Okay, so “podcasts” is not a site, but it is a great new format where you can find a ton of news, entertainment, and anything you can think of. Apple’s iTunes is a great place to start if you aren’t very familiar with podcasts. iTunes gives you a simple, great way to find podcasts in whatever category you’re looking for. There’s also a lot of online podcast directories, like Odeo, Podcast Alley, and Blubrry, just to name a few.

You know what, Mashable wrote a great article on 33 Ways to Watch Free TV Online. Don’t just take our word for it, check it out for yourself

Strike!

Well, I finally got into the Hulu.com beta. I haven’t been using it very long, but as far as tv on the internet is concerned, it ain’t bad. For one, the site and player actually work on browsers that aren’t Internet Explorer. Like Firefox and Opera. They’ve also allowed the movies and videos to be embed in your personal site or blog (see the clip from Family Guy above). One of the coolest things about embeding a clip is you can actually choose the time when you want it to start and end. That way you can use just a small clip of exactly what you want to share.

Okay, so it’s ad supported, how’s that? Well, I’m pretty sure the entire internet is ad supported and it seems to be working so far. As for Hulu, sometimes a show or movie will have a short ad before it plays to say “brought to you by such and such product for limited commercial interuption”. That’s fine with me, less commercials is always a good thing. What ’s funny is that most of the videos you watch actually have less commercials than when they aired on tv in the first place, far less.

So, when Hulu finally goes live for the public, I think it’s worth a look. They not only have plenty of great programing, like Heroes, Family Guy, The Simpsons, The Office, etc. And as long as they don’t go changing the current formula of ad to video ratio, or start making us pay for it, than it should be pretty successful.

Oh, and if you’ve never seen 24, they have the entire 1st and 6th seasons. I highly suggest watching the first season. You’ll be hooked.

Boom!