Fair warning: Hulu Plus remains in a state of "limited preview," and its controversial fee/commercial setup hasn’t changed, either. But v2.02 was released this morning, and it should go a ways towards making Hulu Plus more attractive to potential users.
The updated version includes several new features and improvements, the most important of which is "automatic adaptive bitrate switching." A post on the Hulu Blog explained, "[T]he video quality will dynamically change to accommodate fluctuations in network conditions. This aims to deliver the smoothest, highest quality video stream that your internet connection can handle."
Then another pair of important tweaks involve improved support for the PlayStation Blu-ray remote and the QWERTY keypad accessory, since it might have been hard to enjoy the Hulu Plus experience as long as simple searches required 60 taps on a game controller.
Finally, the size of the application’s been reduced, error reports were altered, video expiration notices were introduced, and a few bugs and stability issues were fixed.
It’s wise of Hulu to address these issues before trying to introduce Hulu Plus to a larger audience. The company’s promised that more changes are on the way, too.
It just remains to be seen whether many people will pay for Hulu Plus when the content selection isn’t that great and they’re still forced to watch commercials.