By Garrison Fairfield

We all knew this was coming, this afternoon TidalTV launched their beta website, which they are touting as a true competitor to Hulu.com.  At first glance I was disappointed with the site’s set up, the homepage is set up just like your TV cable guide, complete with a timelined interface.  This was my least favorite part of the user experience.

I was pleasantly surprised when I started exploring the site that I actually found it to be much easier to navigate then Hulu.  The player is on every page in the top left hand portion of the page which enables the user to search through the entire website while still being able to watch their current show selection.  This feature is what I have been wanting Hulu to do since it launched.  Hulu only allows for you to look through the episodes of a show while the video plays, not the entire Hulu library.

Since they are in a fairly silent beta, their content selection is very light compared to Hulu, however they have a respectable lirbary that I assume will be growing constantly.

I made one interesting discovery when I was combing through the videos tonight.  TidalTV is actually streaming the CBS videos from CBS’s own CDN (Content Delivery Network) and it appears that CBS is selling the in-stream advertisements throughout their own videos.  This would be an interesting turn of events and may also show where the TV studio is headed in terms of online ad supported distribution.  Let’s not kid ourselves, no technology company, not even Google, can sell video ads at the same rates and with the same volume as the TV studios.  They’ve been doing it for over the past half century and they’ve gotten very good at it.  Therefore we may be seeing studios looking to online destination sites to distribute their content, however they may begin selling 100% of their ad inventory.  Terms are typically not disclosed on whether or not the studio shares any of this revenue with publisher website.

So go check out the site, I think this will be a fun site to watch develop.  Will it be a true competitor to Hulu? Even though I prefer the user intereface, the only thing that will really matter in the end is the content that TidalTV is able to stream.  So stay tuned.

Beta site: http://www.tidaltv.com