First take on Hulu.com: It works, at least in the small scale of a private beta. The site itself is uncluttered and easy to follow. The video loads cleanly although it’s a little choppy at times on replay, possibly because of my connection via a wireless router over a hotel network.  It’s fairly easy to find the right shows and movies. I went straight to The Blues Brothers through the search, started to watch following a brief ad and a piracy warning, and was able to quickly speed through to specific scenes—without commercial interruption. Selecting video to embed was a simple matter of sliding a rule but it’s very difficult to be precise; it would be nice to have the option of entering specific times to start and stop. As I mentioned in our initial launch coverage of the News Corp.-NBCU joint venture, even though the beta is private, anyone can watch the video.

Some notes:

—The related video for The Blues Brothers included four episodes of Hill Street Blues and one John Belushi clip from Saturday Night Live.

—RealPlayer’s video download option is blocked.

—Once detached,the Flash-based player can be resized by dragging.  But popping out also removes access to the tools.

Kilar put a heavy focus on the user experience and it shows—again, within the context of a private beta of a site that still has a lot of growing to do.