The Future of TV: Hulu Comes to the Desktop

Hulu has been deemed the way forward for television on the Web since it started serving on-demand episodes on hulu.com a little over a year ago. But now, a new desktop app brings us all closer to the what-we-want (and only what-we-want), when-we-want-it future of Internet TV.

It helps a lot that the free Hulu Desktop app is beautifully designed in every way. It's intended to be operated with a remote (either the little white Apple Remote or any Windows Media Center compatible one), and the interface is perfectly intuitive--browsing shows, scrubbing through an episode with a nifty pop-up still, seeing recommendations and even rating and queuing shows to your own Hulu account are all possible with a few button presses.

The video quality is superb (although you'll need a relatively fast, dual-core processor to run to it), and advertisements are handled just as they are on Hulu.com, but with a nice added counter in the upper left telling you how much longer until your show resumes.

It's not quite the pay-for-only-the-20-channels-I-actually-watch cable plan that I've always wanted, but if you've got a computer in the living room hooked up to your TV or a nice widescreen monitor in the bedroom, your on-demend TV and movie options just got a lot more fun.