[thwarted]

I think that Hulu's interface is terrible compared to youtube. You can't watch and browse additional videos at the same time because the page is so vertical heavy and there's a lot of wasted space (this is especially a problem when you're watching a lot of shortform stuff in series, like SNL clips). The same set of "popular" items shows up at the top of every list, which only enforces the continued perpetuence of these same top items; browsing via youtube is much better. Additionally, the page is extremely flash heavy with there being so many instances of font selection for headings (and it's inconsistent too, I notice today that some of the headings are images of Furtura, some of them are flash that render Futura). Youtube also lets you queue up a playlist without being logged in.

[unalone]

Hulu made registration incredibly easy (no leaving the page) so I can forgive it for that. And I'd agree with you for the other things, but! Hulu is designed specifically for viewing "professional" content. That means that the focus of the site's layout becomes geared not towards usability, but towards aesthetic. And in that regard, its various florishes - having the smaller screen appear like it's in a grayed-out "TV frame" - are extremely good-looking.

The "popular items" makes perfect sense to me, for the following reason: they maintain consistency as you go between links. If I watch Arrested Development and navigate to a certain page, that page remains as I go to the next video. And Hulu doesn't care about perpetuance: they aren't trying to show fair views. They're here to show content. Because of that, showing the most popular content for an item makes sense: if you assume that people either watch in a linear fashion or they come to the site for one particular thing, then you want to offer a linear view and a "most popular" view, to satisfy both groups.

See, I mentioned Hulu specifically because it's designed for more hardcore watching than Youtube. If I go to Hulu, I'm either looking for something specific, or I'm browsing. On YouTube, browsing means looking through recommended content for other interesting videos. Hulu doesn't need to, though: they specialize in lengthy clips, and because of that fewer people will be randomly browsing. They would be worse off with the more "capable" interface from YouTube.

Futura is rendered in Flash when it's dynamic, as an image when it's not. I think that makes sense. Making the image means no need for Flash workaround. However, when you're adding dynamic content, it's too much of a bother to generate an image for each new item.

Besides: all of this is moot, because in the end what matters is the video-watching experience. Hulu offers two resolutions both above YouTube standards; they hide the menu bar when you watch; their display is less visually jarring. And if your business is distributing professional video content, the display is all that matters. (If you're dealing with amateur work, YouTube is still worse than Vimeo. But then again, Vimeo tries to cater to a slightly more professional audience, I suppose.)

[thwarted]

"Hulu is designed specifically for viewing "professional" content. That means that the focus of the site's layout becomes geared not towards usability, but towards aesthetic."

It's too bad that one can't seem to have both "professional" and "usable". I rank them like this in terms of preference:

  1. usable and aesthetic
  2. usable
  3. aesthetic

"However, when you're adding dynamic content, it's too much of a bother to generate an image for each new item."

Then specify Futura in the CSS rules with a fallback, or don't insist on the use of a font that isn't reasonably reliable to be on everyone's machine. Let's use an interpreted VM to duplicate capabilities (text rendering) that the platform (the browser) already does natively. I mean, we have fast processors right? Every one of these is additional embedded objects potentially hampers the smooth viewing of the focus content: the video.

If the display around the video matters to not get in the way, then you should be distributing extremely high quality files that people can watch full screen using the video viewer of their choice without the risk of latency issues. The fact is is that hulu is, by definition, a low definition distribution platform for quick consumption. While it does have features that succeed in this area, and it does have a different focus than youtube, it has just as many issues (and benefits) as every other interface.