No Need to Wait: Hulu Videos Already Available on AOL

Update: Hulu videos are now on MSN, too.

If you are among the many who haven’t received an invitation to the recently launched private beta of Hulu.com – and probably won’t because users can’t send their friends invitations – you don’t have to keep waiting to get your Hulu fix. AOL has already posted 18 shows from Hulu including Heroes and The Office. Expect them to add even more content soon, as there are many more shows that will be distributed by Hulu to its partner sites.

The videos are displayed in AOL’s own player, which unfortunately lacks a few key features including full screen mode, embedding, and sharing (the player on Hulu.com, by contrast, has all of these features and more). You also cannot seek forward to any spot in a video. From what I’ve seen so far, the advertisements played within videos (pre-roll and mid-roll) are quite short and unobtrusive. The resolution is good but not great.

If you’re located outside of the US, you may actually need to wait after all. My colleague Duncan, who lives in Australia, sees this error message when he attempts to view a Hulu video on AOL, which suggests that Hulu is restricting distribution by geography. If you’re proxy server-savvy, you may be able to get around this. Please let us know in the comments if you do.

See our review of Hulu here.