• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, August 5, 2010

The gnomes at Hulu seem to be sending out more invitations to join the $9.99 a month Plus service in recent days. I have been playing with the product across all of its available platforms for a few weeks now: iPhone, iPad, PC and PS3. It still strikes me as a bit of a tough sell despite its many wonders.

Being able to access every episode of Saturday Night Live from episode No. 1 with George Carlin is one of those gasp-including thrills. The sheer tonnage is impressive. All those seasons of Buffy, even runs of nostalgic faves like Rhonda. Hulu is aiming to impress and super-serve the user with the sense that they have access to a DVD store.

But once the kid in a candy store thrill fades there is the practical matter of how, where and when this trove slips into your media habits. Like the DVD collection that gets gifted at holidays, sampled into the first couple of episodes, Hulu Plus risks being shelved and easily forgotten by mere mortals. Tv-aholics and media addicts may think differently, but it is easy to imagine burning through your favorites in a few months and losing interest. Having access to the full current season of a given show has special catch-up value, to be sure. But $9.99 a month's worth? Not so sure it will feel as good in month five as it does now.

The narrow focus on TV content is limiting. Am I in love with TV per se or just in love with good content? While Netflix is not for the TV completist, I have succeeded in making little viewing projects out of drilling through their runs of mini-series mixed with films. The good thing about Netflix is that what they don't have in their hodgepodge Watch Instantly streaming service they do have on DVD just a day away. Hulu Plus has more TV in deeper collections (although far from comprehensive) but it can't flesh itself out with a disc option and its movie collection is ridiculously bad.

As a video viewing experience, Hulu Plus is superb. The 720p holds up brilliantly via the PS3 even on a 60-inch TV. It beats Netflix, Boxee and Apple TV is sheer responsiveness. On the iPhone in particular shows pop up quickly.

Its seamless cross-platform performance is not quite as good as Netflix. It doesn't seem to recall where I stopped viewing everything. But if I leave off mid-episode of Rhoda on the PC or PS3, my other devices will offer to pick up where I left off when I log into Hulu Plus on iPhone or iPad. That persistence is impressive and allows for better media snacking across platforms.

But then there are the ads. Yes, ads. Hulu is pitching Plus as an "ad-supported subscription" that runs precisely the same load of ads (so far as I can see) in the premium product as it runs on the "free" site. It seems to me there is more potential down side to this than upside. Argue until you are blue in the face that we pay for cable with ads, the fact is that Hulu Plus is a discrete new package that is trying to establish its added value with users. Running the same ad pods in the fee and free version makes subscribers have to think that much harder to find the value. Would we tolerate multiple ad pods in DVD collections of TV episodes?

Ultimately it is still a question to me whether Hulu was designed with consumers in mind or to address concerns from the boardrooms of the major media partners. The full equation is not apparent yet, but the pluses and minuses are.