Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog is a 40 minute musical that stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, a bumbling, video blogging super villain who’s trying to get into the Evil League of Evil. The project is available on iTunes for $4 – this week Hulu also put it on its site for free with commercials.
The video is an experiment in a new type of video format that is professionally produced and designed to spread virally (although Whedon is stopping short of supporting BitTorrent trading). Whedon wrote a hilarious guest post on the Hulu blog about the show as well.
Watch the whole thing below, assuming you are in the U.S. And if you missed it, watch our interview with Hulu CTO Eric Feng from last weekend.
Update: So we’ve confirmed that the video has no international restrictions. Hulu has said in the past that they can flip a switch for any particular video to remove the U.S.-only restriction, but this is the first time I’ve confirmed it for a particular video.
NPH is the man.
Managing to stream this from Hulu and i’m in the UK. Presumably Dr Horrible isnt subject to the same US only restrictions as normal tv shows? Another great benefit.
The original plan was for the series to be only up for a couple of days, get the people ‘hooked’ and then offer it on iTunes. I wonder what happened, if no one was buying it or if ads can lead to a better revenue. Being a new show, I guess that they need to build a fan base first.
I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a lack of revenue. Joss Whedon has an extremely devoted fan base and Dr. Horrible has been a pretty big success from what I’ve seen. They’ve even sold out of most of their t-shirts. So streaming on Hulu seems like a pretty logical step to continue distribution.
Unfortunately, it’s not the start of a new series, more like a one off piece with a possible sequel in the future.
I thought no one was suppose to talk about the hulu club
Just when everyone thought I would stfu about dr. horrible already… Now I must go and practice my evil laugh. Because it’s not about Making money, it’s about *taking* money.
Strangely enough, this is the one single Hulu video I’ve found so far to be working here in Germany.
When it played, I got all excited and immediately checked to see if any other Hulu vids would play… nada.
Any other non-US can confirm this?
I’m watching it here from Austria!
That’s awesome: They seem to stop showing *any* content only in the US, that could likely mean that other, US-only TV shows will probably be offered for the outside world, too.
Yup, it’s international alright (watching in the UK). I guess it has different licensing rights to most of their stuff.
As for the video – quite entertaining (from the first few mins anyway) – but not something I would pay for, even four bucks.
yes…people anywhere are apparently able to view it. see update.
Watching Dr. Horrible from Germany, on hulu website and on embedded player on techcrunch! But all other videos are still diasbled.
We broke this story on Tubefilter a couple of days ago:
http://news.tub...part-confirmed/
Glad to see TechCrunch covering this – what a great series!
hey, quit yer braggin’ a;-0
I am in Australia, so why can i watch this hulu video?
why is this video working when hulu has never worked for me before?
damn, I should have read more of the other posts first, nevermind, I understand now
And I do not understand
Check out the related post here –
http://www.that.../fa496611/10370
In fact (I’m in Hong Kong) I was able to watch each episode (they were not release at the same time) till July 19, but afterwards for a couple of days the full movie was locked. They release the lock after that.
This movie is really good BTW.
And Hulu has a really great quality.
I watched it yesterday on Hulu. Quality of video is amazing. I wish the humor was as good..
I thought the humour was good enough. I feel it is surprisingly good. And it was NPH in it.
Yes, in Romania we can see the video. Nice!
what a great blog , welecome back to my blog>watchinstyle.com/watchblog/
Yes, we hope so called the “vyrus video marketing” remains the top online. We launch http://video.landed.ru/ and must confess that video moved aside some banner and textual offers on the market.
Put restrictions on it and save some of the American comedic integrity.
Painfully bad stuff.
I’m from the UK and actually really enjoyed it. Great timing, little breath of fresh air, tongue in cheek, good exaggerated humour; and well shot. And note I don’t generally enjoy the musical format (e.g. Romance and Cigarettes)
This is the first time I’ve managed to watch anything on Hulu and feel really left out. Come on Project Kangaroo!
Dr. Horrible is pretty much the greatest thing ever to happen to the internet. I hope that all of you at TechCrunch have taken the time to watch it.
*waves to intern Peter*
The show itself is genius!
It’s good, but a box office movie on sky that i can see on my TV is only £3 so $4 is a bit steep. There was no advert either so that was free bandwidth from Hulu to watch it
Fantastic show! I’m glad to see it covered here.
Harold: Officer, I’m glad you’re here. You ever heard of that show, Doogie Houser, MD?
Officer Palumbo: Yeah, what great show. Doogie.
Harold: Neil Patrick Harris just stole my car.
Officer Palumbo: Hey! NPH wouldn’t do that, ‘ight!
Just watched the whole thing. What a bad ending.
international??!! what, hulu grew up? no copyright issues? wow, welcome to the world
I can’t access from Vietnam.
“Sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed from within the United States”
Well, looks like it is over now.
Did anyone happen to mention that Horrible is Horrible. That wasn’t funny and they would have to pay me $4 to watch the last half I couldn’t even get to.
The streaming technology is flawless. Dr. Horrible made very quick rounds on Twitter — the Summize top listings indicated as such during the first online acts release.
Thanks for posting this Mike, this is awesome!
I stopped reading after the word “musical” bleh.
thanks….
http://www.beymod.com.tr