I don’t have cable, and my TV signal sucks, so I’ve been streaming video podcasts and downloaded TV shows to my Xbox360 using TVersity.  TVersity works great for streaming but getting content is a different matter – for TV shows you’re basically stuck with torrents and the wifi bandwidth they suck up kills the streaming.

Hulu is an interesting service, providing free network-sanctioned, ad supported streaming of recent and classic TV shows online for free, but so far I’d given it a miss because watching TV shows at my PC doesn’t appeal.

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place via a tip off from this week’s dl.tv – the PlayOn application sits on your computer and serves up Hulu streams to the Xbox360.

The good:

• Lots of TV shows and a few movies too
• Ads are kept to a minimum (usually one 30 second ad per break)
• Decent video quality

The bad:

• Lots of awful content (including the hilariously awful Germano-Canadian sci-fail Total Recall 2070)
• Difficult to navigate through the crap with the Xbox360 interface (hopefully the fall update fixes that).
• Netflix streaming doesn’t seem to work
• Uses lots of bandwith on your local network
• Application will cost $30 when the beta expires

It’s an interesting idea that’s fairly well executed – maybe one day PlayOn and Hulu will morph into a complete IPTV solution.