New Amsterdam and Hulu

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across an ad for an interesting show: New Amsterdam. I believe I saw the ad in a show I'd recorded and watched at a later date.

Which was a problem, as the pilot episode had already aired. It was not scheduled to run again in the near future. So I thought "bummer!" and blew it off. I saw another ad and my curiosity was intrigued, so I went to the network's web site to see if I could watch it online. No such luck.

Then I remembered I had visited this web site a while back when it was in beta; it did high-quality on demand streaming of network shows, but I couldn't remember its name. I later stumbled across an article about it, and put two and two together.

It's called Hulu, and they do have the first five episodes of New Amsterdam. They're in fairly high res; they scale well to full screen on my 1280x960 laptop display. The streaming quality is very good; it only paused a couple times, and each for less than a second.

Since it's free, there are a few commercials, and they aren't skippable. They're 30 seconds long, and only come one at a time. There's a dot in the scrubber, so you can see when they're coming up. While they're running, there's a countdown timer 'til the end. I just muted them and let them go by. No big deal.

I'm really happy with Hulu's service.

BTW, Hulu has the short recap BSG episode up now; it won't be on TV for a few more days.

Oh, and New Amsterdam is a good show. I give the pilot episode 4/5 stars. I'll watch the rest over the next few nights, and watch the rest on the DVR, after the next episode records next Monday.

After I'm caught up on New Amsterdam, I'll re-watch a number of episodes from BSG season 3. I got it on DVD at Borders this past weekend at a nice discount, thanks to their rewards program. Woo hoo.