You can find a lot to like about Internet video services such as Hulu’s new Hulu Plus, especially when you compare them with the traditional ways of watching movies or television shows at home.
Instead of being at the mercy of what’s on the air at that moment, what you can find at the local video store — if you still have one — or what you remembered to record, you can choose from a wide variety of videos and watch them instantly. And instead of paying huge monthly fees for dozens of channels and shows you never watch, you can pay a la carte for your favorite shows on Apple’s iTunes and similar services, pay less than $10 a month to watch a large variety of digital videos from Netflix, or watch a large collection of advertising-supported videos from YouTube, Hulu and other sites for free.
In the past, the big problem with Internet video services was that they were difficult to tune in if you weren’t sitting in front of your PC. But that has changed.
Last month, Hulu became the latest Internet video service to take a step beyond the PC, announcing the launch of Hulu Plus, a subscription-based service for a variety of mobile and living-room-based devices, including Apple’s iPhone and iPad, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, as well as Internet-connected televisions and Blu-ray disc players from Samsung, Sony and Vizio.
The new service, which costs $10 a month, also offers a much greater variety of videos than Hulu offers for free. Hulu’s free site typically offers only a season or two of older television shows and just five or so episodes of shows that are currently on the air. Hulu Plus, though, offers the entire runs of shows such as “Arrested Development” and all the episodes aired thus…