Differences between Hulu and YouTube

Lindsey Rogowicz
Josh Sanchez
Monica Tame
Cheryl Temple


1. When Hulu's homepage first appears on the screen, it was very easy to find my way around and choose the feature that we needed to view our T.V show. After typing in our desired program, it redirected us to a by a page that had a large amount of options to choose from. There were multiple episodes to choose from; you could choose to watch the episodes at full length or find certain clips. After finding and clicking on the episode that you want to watch, it opens a seperate window strictly designed for the feature you are about to watch. The feature window includes many options surrounding the screen. The options include embedding the video, sharing the episode, the details of the episode such as original air date, list of characters/guest stars etc. And, for more aesthetic purposes, it allows you the options to watch it in full screen, to lower the lighting or the choice to watch the episode in high-resolution.
An immediate difference I saw from YouTube was before you pressed play, it would prompt you with the choice to watch sponsored commercial at the beginning of the show, or watch the show with regular commercial breaks, just like you would view it on T.V. They obviously are showing that the content is paid for.

• Unfortunately I can not make the same claim for YouTube.

2. When arriving at YouTube's home page, you are provided several options in order to find your desired media. You can choose from their feature videos, as well as most popular or most watched videos, and even videos that people are watching right now. There is, of course, a search field to enter text to help narrow your search or to find a specific item. We were looking for Desperate Housewives which airs every Sunday at 8pm on ABC. We were given many choices of episodes to choose from. However, none of the episodes listed were at full length. They are given in parts, such as part 1, part 2, part 3; each are about seven minutes each.

After you press play, the video stays on the same page, surrounded by a large screen full of text. This is unlike Hulu's nice organized screen that opens in a new window to view. Also unlike Hulu, YouTube shows no type of advertising or commercial what so ever during the program. The only type of advertising on the page is through icons that play more as a branding tactic. (Those being the Google icon at the bottom of the screen, and the Facebook and MySpace "share" icons )While watching the show, the only options available are to increase the volume or watch the video in full screen. However, most of the shows that you watch from a network such as ABC are a video of someone recording the show on their television making the quality of picture is very poor.

As mentioned before, the video box is surrounded by options on what to do with the media. You can view commentary on the episode as well as statistics and data of the number viewers, such as ratings, the countries it's most popular in, how many views it has recieved and so forth. It allows you to embed the video, share with a friend, view your personal playlist, and flag the video. There is also a list of other Desperate Housewives episodes on the right hand side. Since the episode that we chose was Part 1 of episode seven, it gave me the other clips from that particular episode 7 I was watching. This particular video was posted from another website called www.TvThrone.com. During the episodes there is a header saying "Full episodes at tvthrone.com, in order to try and direct traffic to their site through YouTube.

3. After looking at both of the sites, there are several key differences that makes Hulu a better site for viewing of a network broadcasted programming at length. Although YouTube does provide the diversity to provide anything and everything you could imagine, the quality the tv episodes are shown have very poor resolution, The screen surrounding the video box is very cluttered and distracting making your viewing not anywhere as pleasurable as Hulu. It is relatively difficult sometimes to find a particular episode and not all shows list in parts 1,2,3 like the video we chose. Some are just 7 minute clips randomly selected and posted.

Hulu may not have as much of the amateur/comedic content YouTube has, but it has organization and presentability. It is user friendly and you can find almost any episode of a national network sitcom.
YouTube needs to work on its visual presentation as well as pay attention to its copyright infringement in order to stay alive with Hulu nipping at it's heels.