You by now have all come across Hulu, the joint venture between NBC Universal, News Corp and now Disney. What a beautiful thing. The ability to stream TV shows and movies on demand, straight from the web…as long as you’re in the USA. It may be quite some time before Hulu comes to other countries around the world *sigh*. The UK have a variety of channels allowing users to stream popular shows online such as BBC iPlayer and Channel 4. But what about Australia I hear you say? Yes, we do have some options…
Ten
Ten allows users to stream quite a few of their shows at a relatively decent quality, but you do have to sit through some fairly annoying advertisements beforehand. The similar sponsorship ads you would see before the show when watching it on TV. Although not as good an offering as ABC and no where near Hulu, credit goes to the Ten network for providing a service that no other commercial television station in Australia provides.
SBS
With a service bettering Ten in both streaming quality and user interface, SBS does a good job of presenting full episodes of their shows with minimal advertising and minimal fuss, but does not manage to reach the level of ABC’s iView.
And the winner is…
ABC iView
This is by far the closest Australia has come to Hulu (or even its UK counterparts). ABC iView is an extremely easy to use and very aesthetically pleasing service, allowing users to stream full episodes of virtually all shows aired on ABC. Upon launching the site, it will test your internet connection speed to determine what quality video you are able to stream. The site is also unmetered for a number of ISP’s including iiNet, iPrimus and Internode. Combined with an iPhone app that allows you to listen to radio, read up-to-date news and even stream certain TV shows (wi-fi connection strongly recommended), ABC has (for now) cemented a strong foothold in the Australian IPTV market.
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May 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Hey Sam, thanks for the tip re: ABC player, I’ll check it out!
Not sure if you know but there are ways to work around Hulu (and other) geographical restrictions. Have a look at Hotspot Shield http://hotspotshield.com or Always VPN http://alwaysvpn.com for more info.
Rogerio
May 12th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Hey Rogerio, thanks for the tip, but unfortunately Hulu has started to block these services from working recently – http://bit.ly/17CVPk
Not sure if there’s any others that will work, but let me know if you find any!