It's a wonderful service and it's polished like none-other with a great interface and 480p video (very good by web standards). However, its success is more based upon the fact that it's a joint-venture of Fox and NBC who supply it with content that people want to see than its technical merits. I love it, I'm grateful it exists and that it's so awesomely nice to use. At the same time, I can't really draw many lessons from its success. Maybe: get partners with monopolies on good content which will drive users to your site?
Not new at all, I was always confused that it took so long for all the media companies to realize you could do the 'exact same' advertising for online video as you did with TV. Just let people watch when ever they want on demand and it would be far superior to cable.
It only took them like 5 years since streaming video quality was decent to figure it out... hehe
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5694 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972
That certainly would have made an interesting contrast to the "Hulu is the one that's figuring it all out" theme.
All together I pay $50 a month for Internet & limited cable (Internet is cheaper when you purchase limited cable).
