Why Hulu Won't Work in Dial Up?

Hulu videos cannot be watched properly over dial-up Internet connections.

Hulu is a website where users can watch hundreds of videos, including new episodes of TV shows, movie trailers and feature-length films. Videos on Hulu are streamed through a video player that uses Adobe's Flash plugin and can be watched on any computer with the plugin installed. However, a broadband Internet connection is needed to properly enjoy Hulu videos; users on dial-up will find many problems when trying to stream video from the site.

Problems

Streaming video from Hulu requires your computer to constantly load sections of a Flash video file. When connected to the Internet through a dial-up connection, the Hulu player will not be able to load the video information fast enough. This will result in the player stopping every few seconds to load more video. Considering the fact that a video advertisement will have to load before the video you want to watch, trying to load a Hulu video on dial-up can be very irritating.

Reason

Hulu videos are optimized for broadband Internet connections, which can transfer hundreds to thousands of megabytes of data every second. However, dial-up connections can only transfer 56 kilobytes per second at the fastest, which is not nearly enough to properly download the Flash video files that the streaming Hulu player requires for proper playback.

Possible Solution

If you want to try to watch a Hulu video on dial-up without interruptions, you can try pressing the "Pause" button and letting the video load for a few minutes. This will allow your dial-up Internet connection to catch up to the large file sizes of the Hulu streaming video content. However, because of the advertisement videos that are inserted into Hulu streams, you will have to do this every time a commercial break starts and ends. Also, it may take several hours for a video from Hulu to load using this method.

Upgrade

Because Hulu is not optimized for dial-up connections, you should upgrade your Internet connection to broadband, if it is available in your area. This will allow you to watch Hulu with proper video quality.