Posts Tagged ‘hulu’

As reported previously, all 14 episodes of Firefly are available for free viewing (with forced commercial interruptions) at NBC's new site Hulu.com, which opens to the public tomorrow. And now that the writers' strike is over and writers will get at least something for these, you may watch to your hearts' content.

And not only can you watch them, with surprisingly fast streaming speeds (although that may change as more people start watching), you can e-mail them to friends or even embed excerpts or entire episodes in your own website or blog. Not too shabby, and a great way to spread some Firefly love to them what needs it told. The controls are easy to use, there are options for fullscreen and "lower lights" (which dims the rest of the page to improve your contrast) and more. And room to add reviews, which I expect all of you to do.

Picture quality? Not bad. Not as good as the downloadable episodes from iTunes or Amazon, I don't think, but your mileage (and graphics card) may vary. Fullscreen version is a little pixelated, but still very watchable. I'll be curious to see how well it performs on, say, a Friday night.

A side note: I haven't watched any episodes in a while, but Teresa is working on a Niska Barbie so we needed to review and research. We watched "War Stories," and I freely admit I fell in love all over again. Every single line, every gesture revealed something about the characters and moved the story forward, packing huge amounts of subtext into every scene. OK, the ExpositionFest of Book, Zoe and Jayne deducing where the boys were taken was a bit much, but there's so much to love in this show… I'm preaching to the choir. Go watch 'em all over again.

UPDATED: Hulu, the joint venture from NBC and News Corp. that offers free streaming video (with embedded ads) and will be going public sometime in 2008, has all the episodes of Firefly available for viewing and for embedding in your own web pages and blogs. And they're offering the pilot episode for free to everyone right now. Which would be cool.

Except that the writers of Firefly do not currently get anything for this service, which is the main thing the Writers Guild of America's writers' strike is about. Ordinarily writers get paid an upfront amount and the rest of their pay comes in the form of residuals, percentages of income from re-broadcast. But studios are putting shows and making money from advertising, claiming that playing an entire episode is "promotional" — which is, technically, true, they're "promoting" Ford and Chevrolet and Bank of America and Johnson and…  What it means is that the studios have found a way to make money from reruns without paying the promised residuals to the writers (or actors or directors), and they're fighting to keep it that way. The writers, seeing that more and more entertainment will be moving to the web, are fighting to keep their future income from being stolen away. And I kinda like the writers.

UPDATED AGAIN: After proudly posting the "pilot episode" of Firefly for free — although it was actually "Our Mrs. Reynolds," which was neither the pilot episode or the first episode aired — they apparently listened to the comments and put the right one up, and the episodes in order. However, the numerous posts made by viewers expressing their polite regret that they cannot watch the episodes until writers are compensated fairly have not been approved by Hulu. Ah, well.

So I'd like to urge SerenityStuff readers to avoid Hulu completely, "free" Firefly or not. I flatly refuse to watch any licensed streaming video from Hulu or network websites until the strike is resolved and the writers get fair compensation, and I'd appreciate it if you joined me. Go buy the DVDs instead, at least the writers get something for those. Not much, not what they deserve to get, but something.