I have been using hulu since it was in beta back in 2007. It is a great service. I hardly ever watch regular tv anymore because I can watch what I want when I want on hulu and it is free! The commercials are also much shorter than what is on tv. One of my favorite shows, The Office, is on Thursday nights during our class time so I am able to watch it the next day on Hulu.
Hulu must have some big server farms. For one, all of their videos are flash videos. I am not sure what format they recieve the videos in from the networks but I would venture to say that it is not flash. They must have a lot of CPU power to convert the videos to flash. They also require a lot of bandwidth. Almost all of their videos are available in 480p which streams at 1000kbs. They also have a few videos in 720p such as Dr. Horribles Sing Along - although I do not see it on their site at the moment. They may have removed their HD gallery completely since it requires a stream of 3500kbs. I see mentions of it but can not find it on the site anymore.
Hulu is only available in the US. They use an IP blocker to filter out requests from outside of the US. I believe this is an attempt to limit bandwidth and it also gives their advertisers a smaller target audience. The content providers probably want it to stay in the US for copyright purposes as well.
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