Yeah, it's clear that quality is not the focus of Hulu. It's better than Youtube, but not as good as iTunes (which I don't think is very good to begin with).

Here's the nice thing about it: I was working on something late at night recently, and decided to take a break and watch something. I decided to check this Hulu thing out and see what TV shows were available. I was surprised to see that Kitchen Confidential, a show that was on the air briefly a few years ago, had all its episodes on the service (13 episodes total, 9 of which were never broadcast). I was able to watch all the episodes, and though before each one I got a message saying "Brought to you with limited interruptions by ...", I never saw a single commercial during the episode.

That said, I repeat, the quality is bad. First, the version of the show that Hulu had was 4:3. Second, as I asked about in a previous post, I got about a 8-10 framerate at full screen. Third, the video quality was average at best.

So yeah, I "obtained it through other means," and got the 16:9 DVD quality versions that ran at full screen/framerate.

They've still got a little ways to go before they're offering something that has an advantage over piracy. I think they're really close, though.