Hulu's Desktop App: Lean Back And Enjoy, Unless You're a TV Exec

(MoneyWatch)  Been playing around with Hulu's new desktop app this morning, and trying to suss out whether Hulu just killed the TV business, or whether this is just another bit of Hulu hype. On the one hand, it always boggles my mind that things that are already easy need to be made easier. How hard is it to type in Hulu's URL and then watch whatever you want, when you want to? On the other hand, it's amazing how little tweaks to already easy-to-use products, like when Google introduced its toolbar, make services that much more accessible, and give them that much more traffic. Building a desktop app, if you're Hulu, is a no-brainer. What the hell.

But surprisingly, that's not really what makes the Hulu desktop app so potentially game-changing; it's what happens after you've clicked on the desktop icon that's more important. You can truly, as the "Lean-back viewing for your PC" tagline says, sit back and navigate, with an Apples or Windows Media remote, through the entire Hulu catalog. It truly has the ability to make watching TV on the PC more like watching TV on TV.

That said, it's not perfect. First, bandwidth issues can still make the experience a little, well, tense. Not that Hulu has much control over bandwidth -- except maybe to make the app somewhat leaner going forward-- but for me, the video only streamed fairly effortlessly when I shut down a bunch of Firefox tabs and Tweetdeck, and even then, was it TV quality? No. Second, it's still much quicker to use the keyboard to search for a specific show or video, although Hulu uses a scroll-through keyboard in its search function.

However, Hulu is onto something here. The only question is whether it's Hulu, or cable operators that ultimately win the rush to create the world's most used, and comprehensive, video library. Cable operator's should be threatened by the app's "lean back" language because they haven't yet duplicated what Hulu already has in terms of both the vibrancy of the video catalog and in terms of the user interface; the advantage they had was that they were streaming their video over a TV. As the mother of a pint-sized SpongeBob fan, I'm always appalled that on Cablevision, it takes 18 clicks to select and play the show, and that, during any given month, there are only about five 15-minute episodes available. It also has little memory of what we've played, except for a small "Active Rentals" function; Hulu provides a history of past viewing once you create a free account. When you think about the money most of us shell out for cable, these services should be more fleshed out than they are today.

Even though Hulu is ahead of the game, I wouldn't call it the winner yet. But I will say that if you want a peak into the future, download the app. Now. It's a preview of the on-demand video libraries to come.

Previous Hulu posts on BNET Media:

• Seven (Often Stupid) Reasons Hulu Doesn't Have More Ads
• CBS' Shows Only Two Clicks Away from Hulu's Home Page
• Is Hulu Scared of the Big, Bad Advertising?