My how times change quickly. I remember signing up for Hulu just to be able to watch my TV shows on my phone. Now I subscribe to Hulu because I don't have cable at all. I'm 33 and out of the 10 friends I'm thinking of right now only 2 still have cable TV and most of the rest of us have cut the cord.
I'm also on the edge of cutting Hulu as well as most of the limited TV time I have goes to Netflix and HBO at this point. The major networks haven't put out as much enticing content in the last few years.
> The major networks haven't put out as much enticing content in the last few years.
It also doesn't help that Hulu's contracts with several major networks have expired over the years faster than replacement contracts as major networks try to carve out individual streaming apps of their own. Hulu's usefulness as an aggregator is getting questionable, especially with the foray into "Live TV" that certainly seems counter to what I signed up to Hulu for in the first place: cutting the tyranny of TV scheduling as much as possible, while still keeping somewhat water cooler up-to-date versus Netflix binging a full season months after the fact with few to discuss it with (though now everyone's water cooler is getting tuned/reset to Netflix so even that need is disappearing/shifting).
Add in Amazon Prime streaming plus acquiring content in other ways. Sure, there’s a market for some number of players but there’s a limit to how many subscriptions any given household will buy.
Yes. Especially if the cable companies lose share drastically, and they should.
They are like all-you-can-eat buffets, only for a few people with big appetite. I also don't like their click-and-bait tactics (you sign up for $80, you end up paying $150 in a year).
Hulu is a legacy network company and it is absolutely terrible, it disappoints me that so many support it. It is primarily owned by legacy companies (NBC, Comcast, ABC, Disney, 21st Century Fox) and shows commercials even to premium users. I haven't looked at it in a while but it used to put shows up slowly after they already aired and halfway through the season start removing episodes.
I hate it and it still supports this absurd legacy idea that if you pay for content the cable companies should still be able to sell your time (and your data) to advertisers.
Is there anywhere that you're legally able to pay $12/mo for completely ad-free programming? The vast majority of shows are ad-free, and a 15 second ad before an episode is hardly worth getting up in arms about when the alternative is ~16-18min of ads/hr.
It's only 7 recent shows [0]. Also, consider Netflix and Hulu aren't competitors. They offer different content, mostly. Hulu has more recent and a far larger back catalog of popular television shows. Netflix has more older movies, original content, and a sprinkling of older television shows.
I'm not defending Hulu, I don't have a subscription. Consider that it's a fraction of the price of cable which has commercials, even with the limited commercials for $11.99, it's quite the bargain. It's on demand too and supported by just about every recent smart TV or streaming device.
> While the list of shows may change, they are currently: Grey’s Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Scandal, Grimm, New Girl, and How To Get Away With Murder.
In my experience this is the result of some weird contractual framework. Of the show's I've watched, only Marvel's Agents of SHIELD included it and it was almost always 15 second spot. Not really a big deal for me.
Sounds like you're more upset about who owns Hulu than any real experience or issues with it. They've had an ad-free version for quite a while now, and most shows are up immediately after they air and stay up all season.
There are a small handful of exceptions (example: out of all the shows I watch, one of them has a commercial, and it's only a single 15 second one before each episode and one other show only keeps 5 episodes at a time live), but for $12/mo it's still a great value compared to what you'd pay to your cable company.
It's bad on all of them. They made stuff you want to do often (like see previous episodes of a season) take multiple clicks just so they could fill the page with images. That's especially annoying on a non-touchscreen device like Roku.
It's visually appealing but could be much more functional while retaining much of that.
Netflix is more functional in some regards but I still feel overwhelmed by the selection with no way to sort through it that makes sense to me. They have so many shows, so many nonsensical ways to categorize the show, and no ratings anymore to tell me whether it's worth it. They often move things around in nonsensical fashion (my biggest complaint is that "continue watching" is sometimes at the top, where it should be because it's almost always what you want, but then sometimes several rows down, with no discernible pattern.)
It's consistently the worst app on any set top box platform(android, firetv, apple tv, roku, anything) which is REALLY saying something as there's some super awful ones out there like HBO Go. It refuses to play nice with, for example, voice search on firetv even after _years_(it's officially supported, but breaks almost every time)
It's a laggy junky mess and is plain-faced awful compared to the vast majority of the competition. It looks pretty when you're not interacting with it at all, and i'm sure that sold this "cool cutting edge UI" as powerpoint slides in some big design by committee meeting.
I happily pay Hulu the $12/month (plus tax) they ask for because it was an improvement over what I had. It pays, even a little something to the people and companies that are creating what I'm watching, it's easier than pirating shows, and I've not watched a single show with a pre- or post-roll advertisement. As for the existence of ads, I'd prefer that if they do exist, they run before and/or after the show. It's the interruption of the story that I don't like.
Frankly, this is the same reason why I pay DirecTV NOW the $35 that they ask for. I get what I'm interested in--with DTVN, it's live TV for the times in a month that I want it--for far less than I was paying and the experience is equivalent or better than what I had before.
For me, it's "just television." I don't hate or love it. It's moving pictures that tell a story or inform or just throw out jokes. Sometimes all three. If I can get a better deal with more flexible access (and I can and have), awesome.
I see many people complaining about ads on premium content, but its so minimal you will hardly ever see it, and if you do its very short, anyways, hasn't bothered me at all.
Also, if you haven't looked at it in a while, it has changed a lot too. I alternate between Netflix and Hulu live tv, pretty happy with these services.
The reason I complain about ads on streaming services is that they are a definite step backwards. I've had cable since forever and I haven't had to watch an unskippable add in almost 20 years.
The issues I have with Hulu aren't all that different from the issues I have with Netflix. Yes, content is removed without warning, but it is on Netflix too. Yes, there's a delay between a show being broadcast and it showing up on Hulu, but there's a considerably larger gap with Netflix. Neither of these applies to Hulu's own original content, same as it doesn't with Netflix.
All the streaming services, IMO, share the same flaw - they can't provide all the content I want to watch. I really wish we'd ended up in a world where I can just buy the latest episodes of Black Mirror, Handmaid's Tale and Star Trek: Discovery when they come out, rather than have to maintain separate monthly subscriptions for each, but alas. Ironically, I can buy a lot of network show content by the episode on iTunes/Google Play/whatever.
I don’t have cable. I have DirecTVNow. I can get most of the shows I watch on Hulu via DTV, but I still subscripbe to Hulu without commercials because it is a much better experience.
My main problem with Hulu is that it's really only a replacement for terrestrial TV. Most of the stuff I watch on cable isn't available on Hulu. And if I only wanted terrestrial then I live in an area with good reception and can get a commercial free DVR experience for about $400 (2.5 years of Hulu).
My biggest complaint with Hulu is the watermark/bug they add to everything. It is large, unsightly, and can be very bright compared to the actual content. I signed up for Hulu ad-free premium, but dropped it because of the bug.
Broadcast tv, satellite, and cable networks often have a bug show up when a show returns from commercial break. It is somewhat transparent with dulled colors, and often disappears after a short period of time.
Hulu's bug is large, less transparent, bright white, and sticks around for the entire show.
It was pretty bad when watching something with a dark scene - bam - blinding white watermark distracting from the actual content.
I think this idea that businesses are only allowed to have one revenue stream seems a bit strange. Other businesses that are supported by payments and ads include: magazines, cable TV, movie theaters, newspapers, public transit, air travel, and amusement parks. If Hulu thought that people would pay twice as much for ad-free content, then I'm sure they'd offer it.
They do offer it and I pay it but it's thankfully not twice as much. I'd probably still pay it because they have great content. Though I watch a half hour a day on average and certainly have no need of it.
I like Hulu, but I was surprised when traveling to find out it’s not available outside the US at all, except for a “Hulu Japan” service. I wonder if there’s a group of consumers that would pay a premium for a streaming service with similar levels of content that worked regardless of IP-inferred geolocation.
This is the case for most streaming services. Pretty much the only one I've found that works without hacks is Netflix, although their content varies quite a bit from one country to another.
I understand this is due to licensing restrictions but it's pretty annoying all the same. I'd happily pay for Filmstruck, for example, if they'd only let me.
filmstruck, as in the new site with critereon? That was one of Hulu's main attraction. How is filmstruck technically ? I checked it a few months ago, and it was flash based, and no support for linux. Still the case ?
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 90.8 ms ] threadI'm also on the edge of cutting Hulu as well as most of the limited TV time I have goes to Netflix and HBO at this point. The major networks haven't put out as much enticing content in the last few years.
It also doesn't help that Hulu's contracts with several major networks have expired over the years faster than replacement contracts as major networks try to carve out individual streaming apps of their own. Hulu's usefulness as an aggregator is getting questionable, especially with the foray into "Live TV" that certainly seems counter to what I signed up to Hulu for in the first place: cutting the tyranny of TV scheduling as much as possible, while still keeping somewhat water cooler up-to-date versus Netflix binging a full season months after the fact with few to discuss it with (though now everyone's water cooler is getting tuned/reset to Netflix so even that need is disappearing/shifting).
They are like all-you-can-eat buffets, only for a few people with big appetite. I also don't like their click-and-bait tactics (you sign up for $80, you end up paying $150 in a year).
I hate it and it still supports this absurd legacy idea that if you pay for content the cable companies should still be able to sell your time (and your data) to advertisers.
They also have a full back catalog for a number of shows I watch.
> A few shows play with a commercial before and after the video.
We don't want to see ads, we're willing to pay not to see ads, fuck off with the ads.
(account not currently active so not sure how bad ads really are, but when I get it the non-premium plan is basically no longer an option)
Youtube Red I might pay for, but still mad they won't let me watch vids on Ipad with screen off now so haven't signed up out of spite.
I'm not defending Hulu, I don't have a subscription. Consider that it's a fraction of the price of cable which has commercials, even with the limited commercials for $11.99, it's quite the bargain. It's on demand too and supported by just about every recent smart TV or streaming device.
> While the list of shows may change, they are currently: Grey’s Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Scandal, Grimm, New Girl, and How To Get Away With Murder.
[0] https://help.hulu.com/en-us/included-in-no-commercials-plan
I just wish they had an open API so I could use it on Kodi.
- I was watching a tv show, they aired the season finally commercial during the show and spoiled the whole season for me.
- they switched to some weird way if viewing shows that increased the clicks to watch a show to 7. I stopped watching for a long period of time
- after returning after several months from being angry about the above, they switched to paid model and deleted my account
There are a small handful of exceptions (example: out of all the shows I watch, one of them has a commercial, and it's only a single 15 second one before each episode and one other show only keeps 5 episodes at a time live), but for $12/mo it's still a great value compared to what you'd pay to your cable company.
It's visually appealing but could be much more functional while retaining much of that.
Netflix is more functional in some regards but I still feel overwhelmed by the selection with no way to sort through it that makes sense to me. They have so many shows, so many nonsensical ways to categorize the show, and no ratings anymore to tell me whether it's worth it. They often move things around in nonsensical fashion (my biggest complaint is that "continue watching" is sometimes at the top, where it should be because it's almost always what you want, but then sometimes several rows down, with no discernible pattern.)
But once you get into your show it's better.
It's a laggy junky mess and is plain-faced awful compared to the vast majority of the competition. It looks pretty when you're not interacting with it at all, and i'm sure that sold this "cool cutting edge UI" as powerpoint slides in some big design by committee meeting.
Frankly, this is the same reason why I pay DirecTV NOW the $35 that they ask for. I get what I'm interested in--with DTVN, it's live TV for the times in a month that I want it--for far less than I was paying and the experience is equivalent or better than what I had before.
For me, it's "just television." I don't hate or love it. It's moving pictures that tell a story or inform or just throw out jokes. Sometimes all three. If I can get a better deal with more flexible access (and I can and have), awesome.
All the streaming services, IMO, share the same flaw - they can't provide all the content I want to watch. I really wish we'd ended up in a world where I can just buy the latest episodes of Black Mirror, Handmaid's Tale and Star Trek: Discovery when they come out, rather than have to maintain separate monthly subscriptions for each, but alas. Ironically, I can buy a lot of network show content by the episode on iTunes/Google Play/whatever.
Broadcast tv, satellite, and cable networks often have a bug show up when a show returns from commercial break. It is somewhat transparent with dulled colors, and often disappears after a short period of time.
Hulu's bug is large, less transparent, bright white, and sticks around for the entire show.
It was pretty bad when watching something with a dark scene - bam - blinding white watermark distracting from the actual content.
I think this idea that businesses are only allowed to have one revenue stream seems a bit strange. Other businesses that are supported by payments and ads include: magazines, cable TV, movie theaters, newspapers, public transit, air travel, and amusement parks. If Hulu thought that people would pay twice as much for ad-free content, then I'm sure they'd offer it.
I understand this is due to licensing restrictions but it's pretty annoying all the same. I'd happily pay for Filmstruck, for example, if they'd only let me.