Subscription-Based 'Hulu Plus' Is Now Official 434
itwbennett writes "After months of rumors, Hulu officially announced its $9.99/month Hulu Plus service. Invites will soon start rolling out in weekly batches. So what will you get for that $9.99? 'Full access to a bunch of current shows (Hulu lists 40 but adds 'and more' to that list) as well as complete series collections of some older titles such as The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the wonderful and mostly-ignored Eli Stone,' writes blogger Peter Smith. 'HD content sources will be streamed at 720P but Hulu mentions that the service is ad-supported.'"
HD Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Goodbye Hulu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you pay 9.99, and then still have ads on top of it? Absurd.
Worked for cable.
Nice for Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like Hulu is doing good advertising for NetFlix to me.
Ad-supported? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean to tell me you have to wait for an invitation to a paid for product that's ad-supported? What are they thinking?
Their collection of shows do not seem that impressive either. Where's Weeds/Big Love/True Blood, or whatever people are watching nowadays?
I have a hard time believing that this is going to go anywhere. My $10 a month stays with Netflix, color me unimpressed.
Anything! (Score:5, Insightful)
Charge for it, put ads in it, charge a low price and put ads in it, but for crying out loud make Hulu available in Canada.
netflix? (Score:5, Insightful)
netflix is $8.99, is ad-free, has more content, has many client platforms (PC, mobile, wii, playstation, roku, etc), and includes DVD rentals by mail.
what are they thinking?
So lets see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Count me out.
To all "media" executives take a few things in note, I can go to the pirate bay and get shows ad free that I can watch everywhere without stupid little geographic or device limitations. Oh and its free.
Look, we have no problems buying your crap, but when its easier to pirate it and you get a better product? Why not download it?
Re:HD Sources (Score:3, Insightful)
When I can get ad free, streamed to my TV, computer, or phone, and HD then I'll consider paying. Otherwise I'll stick with the TV I already pay for.
Re:Pay for ads (Score:3, Insightful)
You're paying for access to a larger library.
No pay you get ads and access to only certain shows and only the last handful of episodes (can't remember the actual number 4? 5?)
Pay and you still get ads but you get access to the entire Hulu library.
I personally would consider it IF they released shows as soon as they're available and had everything I was looking for. I already pay for satellite to the tune of $80 per month. This would be far cheaper.
And the reality is, if you want television content to be completely ad-free (ie, viewer payments finance every part of the show), then you'd be paying a HELL of a lot more than $10 per month.
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
Convenience: Hulu would win here, but it decides instead to limit its access not only geographically but also by device. I can watch a torrented show on my laptop, desktop, HTPC, cell phone, Wii, Xbox, PS3, etc.
Price: You can't compete with free unless you give a much better product
Quality: Torrents don't have ads. However, you do have to deal with crappy rips and mislabeled media so its a tie.
Value for the money: With Hulu you get a lesser product than a torrent which is more inconvenient, torrents are portable and free and ad-free.
I think torrents still win, which is rather sad because Hulu could easily be better than torrents but instead they have their head in their ass.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unskippable ads. Unlike with cable (with a DVR), where you can fast forward or skip through them, if you've recorded it.
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only that, but at $10/month, why wouldn't I just get Netflix? That's $9/month - and you can get DVDs in the mail of said shows, as well as many, many more.
For free with minimal ads, I'm willing to put up with a small degree of inconvenience and lack of QoS. If I'm going to pay, I want a guarantee of QoS. I don't mind so much if it takes a couple days to get it, but if I'm going to have to deal with their connectivity issues (or my ISPs), no thanks. Watching a show half way through, losing connectivity, and then having to wait to finish it is not fun when you've only got a couple hours a week for such luxury.
That situation might change if I had the option to completely buffer the show before playing it, or download it independently of their shit flash player - but not until.
And no, we don't hook a TV up in our house. 10 minutes of ads for every 30 minutes of "airtime"? Are you kidding me? I don't think so.
Re:netflix? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Goodbye Hulu (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I suppose one could argue that this is just the first phase of them getting rid of the standard Hulu.com. But I think that's pretty unlikely, because what they are offering here is really not at all compelling. These are what they are offering:
Hulu.com
Stream from website to computer.
Stream to any Internet-capable device or television set if you know how to do some basic config (e.g. hook up some cables).
Deal with only having access to a subset of episodes for any given show (usually only the recent ones).
You have to agree to watch ads.
Hulu Plus
Stream from website to computer.
Stream to an iPad, iPhone, or some compatible set-top boxes.
Streaming to other devices requires knowing how to do some basic config.
Access to more episodes. (But by no means an exhaustive catalog.)
Potentially better video quality than standard Hulu (but still limited by your net connection and buffering...)
You have to agree to watch ads.
You have to pay $10/month.
So... for $10/month you can get your shows on your iPad and access a few more episodes. But that's about it. This is not the compelling deal many were hoping for. With this kind of deal, Hulu.com will remain by far the more prevalent user experience. Really, people who are ready to drop money on a new set-top box or a monthly subscription or something like iPad 3G + 3G data plan + Hulu Plus subscription will probably be better served by other offerings (like buying shows on iTunes and downloading them to the device... which is probably cheaper since you can grab the shows over cheap WiFi and watch them later...).
The normal Hulu isn't going anywhere. Not with a lackluster deal like that!
Speaking of "Entitlement Complex" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think it's great, then by all means pay for it, but don't act surprised when not everyone thinks exactly like you do..
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, if it's a movie then it's not worth it to go to hulu. The commercials ruin the mood and flow of the movie, whereas TV shows are actually designed with commercials in mind. If it's something that I want to watch more than once then I will torrent it because I'll have to watch the ads on hulu multiple times.
It's not a "bittorrent is always better" or a "hulu is always better".
Re:HD Sources (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with Caimlas, $10 a month for netflix is a much better deal. There's enough past seasons of TV shows on netflix to fulfill my entertainment needs. I am perfectly fine being one year behind the TV curve via netflix DVDs.
Hulu must have gotten royally shafted on their licencing terms to have to advertise on a paid TV stream; netflix and hulu are offering essentially the same services at the same prices but one is with and the other is without ads. As someone long used to not seeing ads, it's easy to choose which service I'd prefer.
BitTorrent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
No searching for the latest torrent, in the quality I want, without commercials...in the amount of time it takes to find the show I can have watched all the commercials and the episode a couple times over.
The Pirate Bay isn't the only tracker out there.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
$120 a year for the privilege of watching ads during the viewing is insulting. Perhaps if they made it pay as you watch up to $10 a month it would feel so bad, but a flat $10 a month is just way too much for what they're offering. Personally I won't be paying, I don't mind watching a few commercials, but expecting me to pay for that kind of limited selection and watch ads is just a tad bit insulting.
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
And for god's sake, the ads on Hulu are as un-irritating as advertising can possibly be.
Some shows at least, they show the same commercial multiple times. For instance a certain embarrassing Japanese anime show. That fucking 5 hour energy drink guy looks like a douche and gets played every other break, that's -far- more annoying than 5 less annoying commercials you only see once.
Other than that, I agree. Many of the ads are actually for charities, which isn't bad.
Over the course of a 40-minute show, you have to watch maybe five 30-second spots, as opposed to eight or ten per break on television.
For now.
paid advertisement (Score:3, Insightful)
Another bunch of greedmongers who don't get it. Look, you can either sell me out to the ad companies, or take my money to provide me with a service. You can not do both. Sooner or later, the interests of the parties involved will clash, and we know that it's seldom the customer who comes out on top.
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. That's like saying Walgreens is competing against drug dealers.
No: Hulu is competing against other legal means of on-demand video distribution. The rights-holders may grant exclusivity to Hulu, in which case there really is no competition.
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Torrents require you to finish your download and plan your watching ahead of time.
It requires five minutes of setup to have automatic downloads of shows you know you're going to watch.
Re:HD Sources (Score:3, Insightful)
It's perfectly fine, yes.. until you catch up. They don't make old shows the way they used to.
Re:Wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
Where the Hulu ads are a way of trying to keep their price lower. Otherwise, it'd be even worse than it is. Just look at the premium channels, where you pay a substantial sum of money for *one* channel of ad-free programming.
here is the deal. most of the hulu television content made it's money from original over-the-air broadcasts, so any future revenue streams after that is just bonus money for them. content was paid for already, this double & triple dipping is a problem, not the solution. at most, ads should pay for running the site and nothing more.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)