Watch Movies Online - Lights On, Lights Off

There some things that you might think you would miss by watching movies online. Large screens, mountains of popcorn made by someone else and the theater feel of dimming of the lights.

Two excellent sources of movie viewing Hulu and Netflix have done their best to work this into their offering.


If you have watched a movie online in front of your PC, you know that the area outside of the picture can be a little jarring at times. Often it is much brighter than section of the screen that is showing the movie. That can make your eyes wondering during the show.


This distracting area can also hold ads when you are on an advertisement supported site like Hulu. I get it that if the movie is so boring you start reading the ads because are more interesting might mean that you need to choose better online viewing picks, but still lets try to keep that down to a minimum.


So, how do you stay focused and solve the problem? Hmmm? Do you hear me? Were you reading the ads and not my words. Got to get a better light switch for the blog.

Anyway, here are how two sites have manged to give you one step closer to a true online movie experience.

If you are Netflix (not ad supported) you just do away with it all together. Their frame around the movie you are watching is black and contrast nicely against your online viewing.


Hulu goes one better and gives you a choice. They offer you the chance to lower the lights. There is usually an ad section that stays "lit" during the movie and it matches the latest commercial that you watched, but you forget it is there soon enough.


So as you kick back with your home made popcorn and your fake bucket of soda to enjoy the latest to hit your PC, keep in mind that keeping the lights on or off is up to you.


Until next time, remember to watch movies online.

Watch Movies Online - A Look at Hulu

Hulu was built to Watch Movies Online. It was originally built as NBC answser to iTunes when NBC decided it could do a better job a marketing their television offerings than iTunes could. NBC also wanted the lions share of the profits, so there was some monetary sense to it too.

By adding commercials throughout the programs, Hulu allows you to watch movies or television programs online for free. The commercials are much easier to take than they are on regular broadcast television. Usually they last somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds. Much less than you would see elsewhere.

When you watch movies online through Hulu, the commercials can seem oddly placed. In fact, it often seems that Hulu has just said, "The movie is two hours long and we need to show 8 commercials, so give them one every 15 minutes no matters what is happening." It can be quite a jolt at times, but does not do to much stop your enjoyment of the movies online as you watch.

Movies are obviously not Hulu's bread and butter. They only have about 100 movie or so that you can watch online, but what they have a pretty good. In future posts, I will write some reviews of my favorites.

Online movie watching is not the only choice at Hulu. They also have a very broad list of telvision series from the current NBC and Fox stables.

Most of the these programs are available for you to watch online for several weeks and in general the episodes show up within a day of their original broadcast time slot.

I have heard that with most programs you can watch online within an hour of their original airing in the Hawaii market place. I am guessing that's the last stop on the NBC circuit for the first run.

After several weeks of being available for online watching, the shows will show up as about the be deleted. They give you several days of warning. So if you are behing on you Heros watching, you'd better get online and get caught up before they go away and you are forced to wait for the next chance to watch, which no doubt be when the season DVD's hit the movie rental stores.

Besides watching current televsion or movies online, you can also catch up on series that have been off the air for a while. Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and The Incredible Hulk are available for online watching and you can relive your fondest memories from childhood or break the spell, probably a little of both.

Watching movies online even on a DSL connection is not a bad experience at all. The online interface takes its time and determines the right speed for the optimal playback of the movie you have requested to watch.

There is also a feature that allows you to sto viewing in the middle of the movie and interrupt your online viewing.

Later when you are ready to watch online again, you can simply call back up the movie you are watching and you will be taken back to point where you left off. That's nice.

So, that's it. Hulu is a great place to start when you are ready to watch movies online.