Bye bye cable?

Hulu is up and running in Japan.

Yes, the streaming TV/movie service that has tons and tons of shows to watch on demand from your computer.

They even got the iPad app up and running on the Japanese iTunes store, and it seems to work smoothly.

Why is this a big deal, when there are already a lot of cable TV providers that give access to almost the same content?

1. You can view any video they have on your computer, iPad, iPhone and many android devices, as long as you have an internet connection.

2. Finding movies and TV shows is insanely simple - no more cumbersome and slow set top TV boxes to deal with. You can also save shows to watch later to your queue and then easily find them on any device you have set to use the service.

3. It's all very easy to see and arrange things by language. I have seen and used a lot of video sites, from movie rentals off of iTunes to sites like gyao and cable provided on-demand, and it's not always easy to find the show you want, and even if you do find the right show they sometimes inexplicably have the movie you wanted only available in a low-res format, or only dubbed in Japanese. From what I've seen on Hulu most shows and movies are viewable with or without subtitles and are all shown in the same (what seems to be high) resolution. I'm watching Passenger 57 while I type this and it says it's playing in 480p but it looks better than when I watched it streamed from my cable box a few weeks ago (yes, I am a Wesley Snipes superfan).

Well, the one down side is Hulu is a pay site. You have to sign up and will be billed per month. But compared to a lot of cable deals and video rental services, it feels like a huge bargain.

And I guess the other down side is that it doesn't have a ton of TV shows... yet (I hope), but the movie selection seems at least as good as the pay-per-view my cable offers, just minus new releases.

So go to the site, read up on it, and make the decision. Personally, I'll probably keep my basic cable to watch new shows, and use Hulu for older ones and movies, but I could easily see someone making the jump to all streaming video because of this.