With the announcement that Hulu will launch a paid subscription service on May 24th, analyts are speculating that this means the rumored iPad Hulu app is on it’s way as well. The $9.95/month service is being called “Hulu Plus” and will give users access to additional episodes and a more comprehensive selection.

During the days leading up to the iPad launch, Hulu was one of the rumored “launch apps” but ultimately never appeared. MacRumors claimed Hulu was waiting to launch a “subscription service” before rolling out an app.

From a technical standpoint, there are a few hurdles to overcome before this happens:
1. Hulu video is Flash.
The iPad notoriously doesn’t support Flash and given recent statements from Adobe, it likely never will. Hulu could possibly offer an HTML5 version of it’s site similar to the way YouTube and Vimeo have but the question is whether or not Hulu’s underlying videos are actually h.264 encoded mp4′s or if the Flash player is merely calling Flash encoded FLV files. The problem with an HTML5 version of the site is the video no longer has the “DRM-like” quality that Flash provides. Users can easily download the mp4 sources files. Even ad them to iTunes and watch completely independent of Hulu. Most likely Hulu will need to work on some type of server side streaming solution to prevent this.
2. Ads
None of the reports on the new “Hulu Plus” service specify “ad free” video so let’s assume that ads are here to stay for Hulu. Those ads are triggered within the Flash player and are critical for Hulu to continue getting content from the “always scared of new technology” TV networks. With an HTML version of the site or a native iPad app, considerable coding will be needed to recreate the same experience. I can’t see Hulu doing double work for all videos so will they transition to an HTML5 only version?

Regardless of how they choose to deliver the content, if the app does appear, it makes yet ANOTHER compelling reason to have an iPad around as the ultimate media consumption device (iTunes, ABC, CBS, Netflix).