According to a new report, Apple is in early talks to make an offer to purchase Hulu; a popular online streaming service which provides TV shows and movies.

Apple Inc. is considering making a bid for the Hulu online video service, according to two people with knowledge of the auction.

Apple is in early talks that may lead to an acquisition offer for Los Angeles-based Hulu, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Many other companies have considered making an offer to Hulu, with Yahoo having made a bid of $2 billion but the company wanted a five year  exclusive on streaming content. Rumors have also suggested that Google, AT&T, and many other companies have considered bidding while Microsoft has dropped out of bidding earlier this week.

If a deal is made between Apple and Hulu, Apple would receive a new subscription service and could be a potential threat to Netflix. Hulu would retain its exclusive content licenses from its current owners  Disney, FOX/News Corp., and Comcast/NBC. In addition, Apple would be able to offer even more choices for movies and TV shows via the iTunes store and possibly convert Hulu’s video content from Flash to HTML5.

Apple recently  reported  that it had $76.2 billion in cash reserves and securities on its chest. Such a large acquisition for Apple would be unusual since they normally acquire companies that aren’t “well-known” and this large in size. Their biggest  purchase to date of a company was $400 million spent for NeXT Software Inc back in 1996.

Android users, here is something to cheer about. Hulu has officially launched their Hulu Plus app for Android. It brings the same viewing experience for users of iPhone on Android based devices.

We’ve always said our mission is to provide the world’s premium content to people when, how and where they want it. And we know that a lot of people want that content on their Android smartphones. We’ve been working hard to make that a reality, and today, we have begun our early rollout of the Hulu Plus application on Android smartphones.

Hulu Plus will currently be available on six phones only which include the Nexus One, Nexus S, HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Droid II, Motorola Droid X, and the Motorola Atrix with support for other devices coming out shortly.

Users of these devices can download a copy of Hulu Plus from Android market here. This link will not be available for incompatible devices so you might be disappointed. Another important thing is that Hulu Plus does not support most of the new Android based devices, however, we do hope that support for them will come out shortly.

Hulu Plus is a popular extension to the free TV show watching service which charges users to watch previous seasons of some famous shows on FOX, NBC and more. It is currently owned by Comcast and is actively looking for a new buyer.

Till then I will continue enjoying watching Family Guy and other shows on my desktop or iPod Touch.

Must Read: 10 Ways to Watch TV Shows Online

Steve Ballmer boring keynote at the ongoing CES 2011 just got over and he has announced some new features for the Xbox 360 Kinect users. First and foremost, Steve announced the Avatar Kinect feature for Xbox 360 Kinect console owners. Right now, details about Avatar Kinect are sparse but from the keynote, it looked like the feature will allow Kinect owners to hang out with their friend virtually.

Pretty cool, eh? The feature will be available for all Kinect owners by spring 2011.

Along with Avatar Kinect, Microsoft also announced the Netflix and Hulu Plus app with for the Xbox 360 with support for Kinect. Both, Netflix and Hulu Plus will allow users to control the app as well as video playback using voice commands and gestures.

Microsoft did not mention anything else so we have to wait until more information about Netflix and Hulu Plus for Kinect surfaces.

I use Comcast, but I am subjected to daily ads about how Cablevision is going to block FOX Network soon, owned by News Corp. It looks like News Corp is taking their battle to internet grounds now.

All Things D is reporting that Cablevision customers across US don’t have access to FOX content on Hulu, the popular free TV shows and movie streaming website.

The screenshot above makes the battle more ugly. But it is but natural. News Corp and Cablevision are not the only ones to face this, earlier Time Warner also had a similar problem which was sorted out. So, Cablevision customers, hang on till Sunday and you might be able to watch that Football game on FOX after all.

There have been several ways to watch and access Hulu videos outside US in the past, however, Hulu has been blocking those tools and most of them no longer work. However, now a Reddit user has come up with a way to watch Hulu videos outside US without having to use a proxy server or VPN.

However, accessing Hulu Videos outside US is not pretty straightforward and will require you to perform several tasks. You will also have to use the Firefox browser and install a Firefox add-on.

Access Hulu Videos Outside US for Free

Step 1: Download Firefox (if you don’t have it already) and install the Modify Headers add-on (download here)

Step 2: In Firefox, go to Tools -> Modify Headers and from the drop down box select add and enter “X-Forwarded-For” in the first input box and enter the IP address of any US website and click enter.

Step 3: You will need to block TCP and UDP port 1935 since Hulu Flash client tries to connect to that port. Once you have blocked that port it will fall back to Http. To block TCP and UDP ports on Windows, visit this page.

To UDP and TCP port on a Mac, type this in a terminal window:

sudo ipfw add 0 deny tcp from any to any 1935
sudo ipfw add 0 deny udp from any to any 1935

Linux users will have to do this through the iptables by running the following commands:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 1935 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 1935 -j DROP

That’s it, this trick should allow you to watch Hulu videos outside the US at-least for a while till Hulu comes up with a fix for it. Using this trick might block Flash on other websites, so use it only when you want to watch Hulu videos.

(Reddit via Life Hacker)

I have seen a lot of advertisements on Hulu, however, for the first time today (maybe this ad was very old) I saw Microsoft advertising IE8 on Hulu to "Amplify your Hulu experience".

The ad in question leads you to a Hulu page which provides users with IE8 add-ins for Web Slices, Search Box and Accelerators. You can see it here.

Not that IE8 is bad, but I would rather stay away from it and use Google Chrome or Opera to watch the videos from Hulu, what about you?

Hulu the free online video service which offers hit TV shows online, is diving into live streaming with the Presidential Address by Barack Obama to address the Gulf Oil Spill issue from the White House.

Unlike other Hulu videos which are limited to the United States, The Presidential Address for the Gulf Oil Spill crisis will be available internationally at 8PM EST.

As President Obama addresses the nation regarding the oil spill in the Gulf this evening, you can catch the speech in its entirety as it streams live from Hulu

Hulu is also allowing websites and blogs to embed the video. You can also watch the Presidential Address live streaming in the embedded video below. Video after the jump.

A few days ago I had posted on how Hulu was blocking Flash 10.1 on Android 2.2 Froyo based devices due to licensing issues. However, for every block there is a workaround and it is the same with Hulu.

A recent post on Absolutely Android has instructions on how users can access Hulu on Android 2.2 Froyo running Flash 10.1. The detailed instructions walks you through changing the Android browser string to use a desktop UAString in order to trick Hulu into thinking that you are accessing it from a desktop.

The hack will only work on Android 2.2 with Flash 10.1 installed. If you do not have Android 2.2 yet, check out how you can root Nexus One to install Android 2.2, you can also download a manual update of Android 2.2 for Nexus One from official sources. You will also need to download Flash 10.1 for the Nexus One.

(Source)

Everyone must be really excited about Android 2.2 Froyo and Flash 10.1, since it will bring a much needed relief to users who haven’t been able to watch flash videos on their devices.

However, if you are a Hulu user and are gearing up to catch up some Hulu videos on your newly installed Android 2.2 OS with Flash 10.1 installed, you will be in for some disappointment since Hulu is reportedly blocking Flash 10.1 access on Android 2.2.

According to a PC World report who got a byte from Adobe, Hulu does not own the mobile distribution rights for the content they have, so they are legally obliged to block the content from mobile devices.

According to Adobe, Hulu does not own distribution rights for their content on mobile devices and therefore cannot stream video to smartphones. With no Hulu on the iPad and no Hulu on your Android phone, isn’t time for Hulu to develop an app? Let’s hope so.

This is definitely a big blow since Hulu is one of the best resources to catch up on television shows and the earlier reasons that Flash support on mobile devices being an issue no long holds.

However, given that Flash 10.1 and Android 2.2 are just released things may change in the near future. However, don’t keep your fingers crossed and in the meantime find alternatives to watch your favorite shows on your mobile device.

We had previously told you on how to download Hulu videos, however, Hulu is known to block applications which provide video downloads for their services.

If the previous tools does not work for you, you can now try out a new tool to download Hulu videos called Stream Transport.

Stream Transport will allow you to download Hulu TV Shows or record the Hulu movies you are watching and save them to your computer. The downloaded files will be stored in FLV format, which you can play using any compatible player or a standalone desktop FLV player. If you use Windows Media Player, you can also use a codec to play FLV files in Windows Media Player.

The software comes with a in-built browser using which you can browse video sites, and also other regular websites. If a video is available for download you will see options to download it in the bottom pane.

To start the download click on the download link and hit the Download button, this will open up a new download window. You can download multiple Hulu videos at one and even pause and resume the downloads.

Stream Transport works pretty well on Windows 7 and supports both 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows.

Techie Buzz Verdict

In addition to downloading videos from Hulu.com, Stream Transport also allows you to download videos from YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Yahoo! Video, CBS, MTV, Megavideo, Photobucket, Dailymotion, Veoh and Demand Five.

This makes it a comprehensive tool and makes it a worthwhile download. However, like I said earlier, don’t expect it to work with Hulu all the time and specially don’t expect this to work outside of US every time you use it.

If you are looking for other tools, you can use our site search to find software to download videos to your computer from different sites.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5 (Excellent)

Download Stream Transport [via gHacks]