Hulu, the popular movie and video portal featuring videos from a number of major U.S. television networks has updated its player interface and has brought a number of additional improvements for users, who are able to access all the content through the site for free (with ads).

The improvements have been outlined on the Hulu Blog, although you are likely to notice them when you watch a video. For example, I noticed the changes immediately and headed over to the blog to check out what has been included.

Changes revolve around the convergence of new technology now available, “lingering ideas form the product team, and user feedback.” These changes are expected to make the joys of watching television programming online easier, and these changes should be improved on further in the future.

Adaptive Bitrate Streaming

Using ActionScript 3 and other technologies, Hulu is now bale to shift video bitrates and resolutions up and down continually to match the user’s bandwidth. We all know that bandwidth can increase and decrease every thirty seconds, so this helps if you want to maintain a stream, but take a small hit in quality. For example, the site will drop the quality from 480p to 360p without any major stuttering.

A number of settings are available to help you use this feature – you can choose to have Hulu to automatically select the best quality, or choose from three other qualities.

Ad Volume Normalization

We all hate the ads that appear to be three times as loud as the program the ad is following, and this is also prevalent on the Internet through streaming video. Hulu has improved the ad volume through normalizations, making adjustments on the fly. The player compares the content’s most recent audio levels with a “precomputed audio value for the ad and brings them into line dynamically.”

Improved Closed Captioning

Two new display options have been included for viewers who either want to read the text or who are hard of hearing. These features include a new yellow text feature as well as a text on solid black background.

Sneak Preview

Previously, you would have had to watch an ad to see advanced previews of the video. This new feature lets you see images of upcoming scenes and what to expect through a small preview. It’s likely that they’ll improve this in the future and offer small video previews (say 10-30 seconds) if the programming allows it.

Heat Maps

The Captions tab currently displays a heat map of the video based on what was spoken during the video, while the new heat map is based on video that may not include spoken text, instead based on what areas of the videos users have enjoyed the most.

Larger Player

Among the other changes to the player, Hulu has also increased the size of the video by 25%, to 720×404 pixels, meaning the video is no longer scaled when displayed in the highest resolution. The player defaults to chromeless, with no controls, giving the player a cleaner, more refined look. A number of the controls are viewable when you hover over the player, like the fullscreen, pop-out, and embed links, either to the side or below the video.

The “continuous play” feature has been renamed “autoplay,” making it more convenient to go to the next video in your queue.

Ad Tailor

TV advertisements are generally not that relevant to the watchers. Typically, the advertisers only have generalized data, such as demographics – the average age of viewers, location, and habits, but the new Ad Tailor found on Hulu lets you give more information to advertisers. A new “is this ad relevant to you?” button is displayed at the top of the ad, which helps improve the relevancy of advertisements served. All responses will remain confidential.

HTML5 – Where Does it Fit Hulu’s Model?

Much of the content on Hulu is served by the “traditional” TV networks, but some of the profits go to funding the Hulu site through a profit split. The site sells advertisements to be included within the programming – anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more for each ad. In addition, the content needs to be protected using DRM so users cannot download the content and advertisers can still be served useful stats.

The war between HTML5 and Flash is continuing to rage on, and Hulu has stated that, at the moment, the technology isn’t there for serving video, although they have stated that HTML5 would be implemented in the future, should the DRM and other technologies be implemented.

Problems Reported by Users

A number of complaints have come with the changes, ranging from shortcuts being removed to bugs to some general annoyances. There is no way to go back to the old player, although Hulu will likely solve some of these problems as they are reported. After all, their blog post announcing these features was titled, “Pardon Our Dust.”