Back in October, Hulu was launched as a joint venture between Fox and NBC. The site was to offer free, ad-supported videos of popular TV shows and movies. Back then and until a couple of days ago, it was still in private beta. I managed to get an invite a couple weeks ago, and I have been enjoying the service greatly (thanks again Alec.)

The service is now public, meaning that you can sign up right now and not only see Fox and NBC programs, but also all of the new partnership content providers including but not limited to: Warner Bros. Television Group, Lionsgate, NBA, and NHL. This equates to over 250 TV series and full-length movies. You can find The Simpsons, The Office, Family Guy and Prison Break with old favorites like Miami Vice and Arrested Development as well as Ice Age, Me, Myself & Irene and The Big Lebowski. Video shorts are also available from Saturday Night Live and others.

Hulu’s streaming quality is phenomenal, at least when they were in private beta, for a service pushing so much data. Half-hour shows finished buffering in about 5 minutes, with a total wait time from pressing play at less than a minute. Members can also clip, share and embed videos on blogs and other websites. The non-skippable ads (which, on any videos that I watched, always were for Tylenol for some reason.) occur three times and last 15 seconds each, not bad considering what would be on TV. I really hope this goes on for a while, as I’m all for getting free content legally if possible (looking at you, Pirate Bay.)

Read more from the Hulu.com press release and website.