Hulu.com is the NBC-News Corp joint venture that makes it easier than ever to watch full length television programs online. The site is currently in private beta. When it launches it will be completely free, and may include YouTube like features allowing you to upload your own content.

Although, I have to say that I hope it doesn’t. We already have YouTube - and we don’t need another one. What Hulu has going for it, is something completely different, and I hope they can be wise enough to stick with what they have, and leave YouTube styled videos of kids crying into their webcams alone.

See, with what Hulu.com has going on right now…it’s, hand down, the best web based television viewing experience on the web right now.

I didn’t honestly expect Hulu to be good. Heck, I didn’t even expect it to be useable. If you go to the networks official sites there is so much flash, banner ads, schedules, games, and other crap that you have to get through, that its a chore to actually get to the point of actually watching the full length episode you came to the site to see in the first place.

Not with Hulu.

Hulu has an almost Apple-like slickness to the design. The user experience is great, with almost nothing getting inbetween you and watching the shows you want to watch…when you want to watch them.

The main page interface for each slow is clean and easy to navigate. You can select from the available full length episodes, or also clips from shows, and once you click on a show, there is only a small 5 second ad, then the show begins. During commercial breaks of the episode you are presented with one 15 second to 30 second commercial (that you can’t fast forward through), and then you’re back to the show.

You can pop-out a window and surf the web while watching the show of your choice, and you can even go full screen with pretty good results. The full screen streaming on all the shows I watched was the equivalent (or close) to standard definition TV viewing.

They are even experimenting with HD content. The trailers playing in their HD gallery take full advantage of the latest version of the Flash player - although I REALLY don’t think I should have to watch even a 5 second ad before watching a commercial for a movie.

The main thing about the HD gallery is that it really shows a lot of promise. You can see that they are thinking ahead with this project, and planning for the future.

I was shockingly impressed with the hulu service. It’s still a beta, and they still have a few kinks to work out. For example, if I watch a show in a pop-up window, then close that window, I can’t go back to where I was in the video back in the main screen. For the most part, however, this thing is ready to go.

You can head over to hulu.com and sign up for the beta. I don’t have any friend invites or anything like that, but as they let new users into the program you’ll eventually get an invite.

Have you tried the beta? What do you think?