Since the dawn of time, more or less, the iPhone’s inability to play back Flash has been a consistent point of complaint from the anti-Apple crowd, particularly proponents of Android. Never mind the fact that, until TODAY, no one outside of Android developers had used Flash on any Android phone.
More comically, of course, Hulu, that prize of Flash video, doesn’t run on Flash-enabled mobile phones. But now it does run on the iPhone, along with the PlayStation 3 and a few Internet-enabled TVs — for a price. I was admitted to the $10-a-month beta for HuluPlus, and I’ve put it through its paces. While it is undeniably quite an achievement for mobile streaming video, it’s also undeniably a beta, and I’m miffed to be paying.
What’s Good
The selection of video is very impressive — there’s much more here than in the standard Hulu line-up. Additionally, with a strong connection, any video gets up and running at extremely fast pace and excellent video quality. The interaction for scrubbing forward and back in a clip is quite responsive, as well, significantly bettering the existing coleman and YouTube app. WiFi performance is outstanding.
What’s Bad
Pretty much everything else comes up short. For example, to watch my beloved “Arrested Development,” I had the option of browsing through all videos on the entire site, without the aid of an alphabetical quick-scroll, or I could search for individual episodes. When I searched by the name of the show, episodes came up in order of popularity, not when they aired, which meant that it took some effort to find the second episode after I finished the first.
There is an option to browse through at a series level, which leads to a more sensible UI, but it’s not obvious at all. When the options are “Featured”, “Popular”, “Search”, “TV’, and “More”, it’s not immediately clear where to go. Is TV not popular? Is it not featured? In general the navigation needs a lot of work. It looks like a competent iPhone app, but it really doesn’t feel like one.
Moreover, playback leaves a lot to be desired over 3G. Not that the quality is poor, which is to be expected, but that HuluPlus always optimistically starts off at maximum video quality, then stops altogether as it switches to a lower-bandwidth stream when it inevitably fails to keep up. Worse, I encountered frequent stuttering on my train ride home, leading to strange audio echoes throughout. YouTube encounters the same bandwidth problems, but nothing so grating.
Oh, and it crashes fairly often, too.
Conclusion
There’s a lot of potential in HuluPlus. Over time, it could grow to be the essential on-the-go video source. But this is a Beta for a reason. I wouldn’t fork over your dollars unless you like hunting for bugs.
