Hulu Plus Now Available To All — But Be Warned

itwbennett writes "Peter Smith outlines some of the things you need to know before plunking down your $10 subscription fee for Hulu Plus, which yesterday came out of its invitation-only phase and is now open to everyone. First off, don't assume that paying $10 gets you out of viewing ads like it does on Netflix — and there's no way to skip them. Second, yes, there's tons of content available on Hulu Plus, but it's not necessarily the same content as hulu.com. 'So if you've been watching a show on hulu.com and can't wait to watch it on the big screen via your PS3, stop a moment and check the Hulu Plus listings,' advises Smith. And then there's the issue of performance, which at least in the preview version has been less than perfect."

Europe

[santax]

Since I am from Europe that whole netflix and hulu-thing is beyond me. Why do you guys want to pay for this? You have torrents, youtube etc. What's on netflix or hulu that you just have to see? This is just a question from someone not familiar with these products and not intended as a troll or whatever. Just want to make that clear ;)

Re:Hulu and Netflix only now for 2 months

[Purpleslog]

"...have been happily using netflix and hulu plus for 2 months now..." - and - "...I am so happy i am not supporting FOX and..." Who do you think partially owns Hulu?

What are you paying for?

[hawguy]

I (naively) though Hulu plus was going to be ad-free. Since it's still got ads, what is the point? What are you paying for? The ability to watch TV on your playstation? Even though you can already watch Hulu for free on your PC? That makes no sense - if they want ad revenue they should be pushing it out to every device imaginable.

When I heard about the upcoming Hulu Plus release I decided to give the regular Hulu a try for the first time. What a disappointment, I tried to watch the first episode of Hawaii-Five-Oh to see what it was like, but I guess it was too late to still see the series premier, as they only went back as far as episode 3. (don't ask me why they wouldn't have all episodes of a brand new show)

So I started watching episode 3 and it hung my browser. I restarted my browser and was able to watch to the second commercial, then the screen dimmed and a message appeared on the top of the playback window saying something like "your browser must allow ads to view this content", though the show continued playing, just dimmer. Conveniently, ads continued to play at full brightness and played just fine, but the show itself was dimmed out, so I continued to watch.

Then I paused it for 30 minutes to take a phone call and when I came back, it seemed to have timed out and I had to start over. Trying to skip back to where I left off made me sit through more ads - the same ones I had already seen.

So I gave up - I'll wait 'till it's available on Netflix. Or not. But I'm definitely not going to pay money for Hulu Plus after that experience.