Like a scene from Minority Report, with one simple wave of my hand we were watching Steve Carell's final episode on The Office on our living room TV. Something reserved only for sci-fi movies in the past has become pretty cool reality. :-) Welcome to the future of media consumption, where just like the ubiquitous finger swipe on your smartphone touchscreens, now voice and gesture control are making their way toward replacing your TV remote control.
Last week was the Hulu Upfront where Hulu talked about the future of their business with regards to distribution across multiple platforms, including the Xbox 360. We've been using Hulu Plus for the Xbox 360 with Kinect for the past week, and I have to say that it's been fun.
While we're used to the futuristic sensor-based fun of playing Kinect for many months now; however, the fact that we can play, pause and fast forward 30 Rock with my hand or voice is still pretty amazing. I'm scrolling through TV shows on my TV! With my hand! From the couch!
Hulu Plus has done a nice job at integrating themselves into Xbox Live. I like the fact that you can sort movies a variety of different ways, and there's a nice sense of discovery scrolling by genre or even by distributor. Hulu has built a fairly substantial library, so I found it difficult at times to quickly locate a show I had in mind, and I'm sure that the navigation and show search functionality will improve in future updates.
If you often watch TV on-demand and have Kinect, but haven't tried Hulu Plus yet, go download it and try it out. Let me know what you think. Your $7.99 a month Hulu fee won't be wasted, and it's a novel way to impress your house guests. Plus, the gesture-based technology will only get better and you'll start to see it rolling out in other ways too.
Disclosure: I was provided a one-month Hulu Plus trial subscription to check out the service.
Very cool! I haven't tried out Hulu Plus yet but love using our Kinect (full disclosure: given to us by Microsoft) to control other things on our XBox. And hey, in Minority Report, they had to wear those special glove things! So really we're ahead of the game.
Posted by: Selfish Mom | May 10, 2011 at 01:14 PM