Commercial Skip on Hulu Programs

I don't know about you guys but since I spend my whole life online writing like 18 hours a day I figure I'm going to have to start incorporating in some television shows so I'm still in the loop at the coffee shop get together :)

I set up my Laptop with the wide screen 17" monitor up next to me and set it to Hulu.com in the browser. This place has all the good shows, past and present. You can watch ALF, It's always sunning in Philadelphia, and even brand new shows like Terminator (the series) The Sara Conner Chronicles, and My Own Worst Enemy.

I have yet to find a show not on there that's current and about 90% of the shows of the past are on there too (different strokes, Alf, facts of life, etc...) I always miss sons of anarchy, my own worst enemy (Christian Slater) and a few others so I catch up on hulu. It's streaming, no downloading needed, they even have full length feature films too! Its a really cool site. I discovered it when I saw an ad on MySpace for ALF, haven't stopped using it since.

I admit I'm addicted... I have a show for every mood of the day! I watch as I work, when I need a break, and when I miss an episode of terminator the Sara Conner chronicles.. its also great when you missed 3 seasons and want to watch them all in a few days!

The only thing that I don't like however, is watching those "commercial interruptions, but I get it they got to get paid by the commercial companies so the site is free.. so I endure...

Until a couple of accidental finds came about...

I even discovered a way so that Hulu still gets paid/credit for my watching the commercial but in reality I'm not..

Bottom line, the following tricks are not circumventing their system, in fact if they found out they probably wouldn't care unless so many people did it that the advertisers found out.

The beauty is your not doing anything illegal, your not breaking tos, nothing, a simple thing they didn't think to do (a feature designed to not annoy their viewers by making them watch commercials actually is the feature we are going to use to... well.. not be annoyed by commercials!

The difference is were going to use it in a way they probably hoped people wouldn't think of.

O.k. enough introduction...

The first thing I discovered was when I was writing my blogs I always liked to have something going on in the background.

As a natural multitasker I can't help but need to be doing 10 things at once to feel focused (strange I know)..

I used to watch the programs by just listening to them while I wrote blogs, in a creative roll I would take peices of what I heard playing (with the show minimized, or playing on another tab in my tabbed browser while I worked) to give me inspiration for my blogs subject matter. (I'm given a keyword then can write anything, even made up so long as it uses the keyword once and is relevant to the keyword).

One day I realized that I could pop the movie/show out by clicking a button on the screen and so I did, and would watch it on the top Left of my screen as I wrote. (see picture to the right)

When the show starts it says "this episode is sponsored by" then it shows the commercial still, this lasts about 5 seconds then the show starts right away...

Sometimes I watch until the first commercial before I pop it out, usually about 5 seconds into the commercial I do it, but one day I hit the pop out button the second the commercial hit and the pop out screen came up (it pauses the other movie playing) and it continued (the show not the commercial) on the pop out AFTER the first commercials!

So I skipped the first commercial (I realized later that you can full screen the movie still in pop out mode although it does have a top and bottom bar through out but so what its still good size... so this was how I learned to bypass the first commercial (I guess this method does circumvent their system for ONE commercial but its because of a bug in their popup window :) (you can do this any time during the commercial too)

I don't use this since I discovered this other way below:

This second method takes advantage of Hulu's "you only have to watch the commercials one time" policy. This means if you watch the show then pass a commercial and something in the show has a twist and you want to cue back to an earlier scene you are not forced to watch the commercials again, even if you watch it all again. It somehow knows you already watched it probably by your temp folder or something where the commercial may be sitting)

This is a DVR trick essentially where you go start your movie wait 15 minutes then start watching your program on the recorder. On DVR (digital video recorder like TiVo), the program can be watched up to where it stopped recording even while its still recording so you can use this 15 minute recording to skip commercials. Since by the time you reach your first commercial its already recorded the commercials you can fast forward through commercials and keep watching, but the DVR is always ahead of you still.

This trick works similar to this but no fast forwarding.

What you do is set the movie up, hit play, calculate how long it will be before the last commercial (just guess) then turn your sound down and go do something else, email surf the web, work, etc... check back once in a while... once it passes the last commercial check point the last dot in the time line then your home free, you don't have to wait for it to finish. click on the time line back to the beginning and just watch it, it will play all the way through without commercials this round.

Unfortunately if you try to skip ahead before its played the commercials (the first round) in the time line it will go to that spot but only after playing a commercial. if you skip back it will still play commercials (any that haven't yet been played) so this isn't effective. But once all the commercials have played while your doing something else you can skip all over the place as it it was a DVR video- commercial free!!

Since it actually did play the commercial on your computer (you just weren't watching it) you didn't break TOS, and as far as them and their clients are concerned the commercial played so they get paid...(hulu)... so the same feature that assures you don't have to watch a commercial twice can be used to make sure you don't have to watch a commercial at all.. sure it takes a while but your on your computer.. you can find plenty to do while you wait for it to play out (or hell go watch your regular tv while its playing out).

Bloggers/Copywriters Routine

I now have a routine when I first get on. Usually I hit the keyboard an hour after I wake up to work on blogs so I get up, boot up and set last nights episode of sons of anarchy (or whatever show) playing and watch television on the couch while sipping my morning java, then set a timer on my microwave to tell me when apx 45 minutes have passed or whatever and I check, usually its just finishing the last commercial and I skip it back afterward and watch the show when I'm ready. (you can skip it back, hit pause then watch it whenever you want the site doesn't expire the page)

As a blogger I have blogs to write all day (I get paid to blog) so I'll watch a show, then blog while the next one is queuing up checking every once in a while then when it hits that last commercial, I take a break. This gives me 45 minutes of blogging then a 45 minute break, works out nicely and helps my creativity. The other beautiful thing is you can control the volume on the show, so I turn it way down then play music while I blog I can pause my music and listen to see where it is, or go check, but the point is I can still use my sounds while the movie is playing! (or you can do the other cool idea, which allows you to watch one movie while cueing up another)

Enjoy your shows commercial free! Whoohoo!

You can load several sessions of your browser at once. I use a tabbed browser so I can load up to 7 tabs at once. This means I can load several tabs for hulu.com.

Thismeans I can simultaneously set up a couple movies/episodes to run at the same time (thank you broadband!) with this trick your talking about a huge time saver here as you can set up 2+ shows to play out, you go watch your regular TV (or do laundry, clean your kitchen, make phone calls etc..) and in one hour you will have several cued up shows commercial free! watch one close the browser watch the next etc...

If you let the movie play out to the end where it does like a YouTube video and show you other movies/episodes you can watch, there's no going back and watching it commercial free, this is why it is important to catch it about the last commercial which is about 5 minutes before the end of the show so its best to set the browser/tabs up to start then hit pause, set up the next show, hit pause etc.. then set them all to play like a domino effect one after another so they all end around the same time. Pause them all during that last segment after the last commercial before watching the first one.

Also this may take up alot of memory so be sure your computer and internet connection can handle this many movies playing without freezing up your computer... You may only be able to set up 2 or 3 at a time (after that my computer starts to crawl so even though I have 4 cued up watching it is really crappy.. if you have alot of memory on your computer and dual processors then you can do more, but I reccommend for the average computer to stick to 3 max. at a time.

Once one is over you can cue up another while you watch the second and so on like that, if your computer starts to freeze up then knock one off or you may lock up :) (Like I did just now testing this idea, I got it while writing this, it does work but it buffers alot at once including commercials (initially) so do 2 at a time for best results 3 maybe.

Enjoy..

Jerrico