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Sonist · 02-10-2010, 05:59 PM

Maybe, according to TechCrunch:

"...One rumor I’ve heard from an industry insider is that Hulu is working on an iPad-friendly version of its site that should be ready by the time the iPad hits the market. ...

"Getting Hulu’s videos to play on the iPad is not that big a deal. They could just do what YouTube does and pop open the Quicktime player when a viewer tries to click on a video in their browser. But making people switch applications every time they want to watch a video isn’t the best experience. Hulu could rectify that in two ways: build a custom iPad/iPhone app with its own player, or rewrite its site in Javascript for the iPad/iPhone browser.

Here’s where things get a little tricky. Hulu’s familiar look and feel is all built into its custom Flash player. It would have to try to reproduce that as much as it can using HTML5, and it might not look as good (for more on HTML5 Vs. Flash and the future of mobile apps, read this post). More importantly, all the ads that run on Hulu are designed for Flash, especially interactive ads like overlays. The ad code, business logic, and underlying analytics would all have to be rewritten for a Javascript player. Frankly, this is the biggest hurdle.

So porting Hulu to the iPad is not completely trivial, but Hulu has a large engineering group (including a group in China) more than capable of doing the work. The question is, with more than a billion streams a month and growing via the good ol’ Web and Flash, is it worth it to put engineering resources just for the iPad. At this point, the iPad needs Hulu more than Hulu needs the iPad."

I personally would be surprised, and also doubt Apple would allow the Hulu app in its store, but there is always Cydia....

02-10-2010, 05:59 PM	#1
Sonist Apeist Posts: 2,126 Karma: 381090 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: The sunny part of California Device: Generic virtual reality story-experiential device	Hulu on the iPad? Maybe, according to TechCrunch: "...One rumor I’ve heard from an industry insider is that Hulu is working on an iPad-friendly version of its site that should be ready by the time the iPad hits the market. ... "Getting Hulu’s videos to play on the iPad is not that big a deal. They could just do what YouTube does and pop open the Quicktime player when a viewer tries to click on a video in their browser. But making people switch applications every time they want to watch a video isn’t the best experience. Hulu could rectify that in two ways: build a custom iPad/iPhone app with its own player, or rewrite its site in Javascript for the iPad/iPhone browser. Here’s where things get a little tricky. Hulu’s familiar look and feel is all built into its custom Flash player. It would have to try to reproduce that as much as it can using HTML5, and it might not look as good (for more on HTML5 Vs. Flash and the future of mobile apps, read this post). More importantly, all the ads that run on Hulu are designed for Flash, especially interactive ads like overlays. The ad code, business logic, and underlying analytics would all have to be rewritten for a Javascript player. Frankly, this is the biggest hurdle. So porting Hulu to the iPad is not completely trivial, but Hulu has a large engineering group (including a group in China) more than capable of doing the work. The question is, with more than a billion streams a month and growing via the good ol’ Web and Flash, is it worth it to put engineering resources just for the iPad. At this point, the iPad needs Hulu more than Hulu needs the iPad." I personally would be surprised, and also doubt Apple would allow the Hulu app in its store, but there is always Cydia....