Hulu Plus Now Available To All — But Be Warned 348
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."
All? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the definition of all here? Does it for instance include Europe or anything outside of the US? Before we haven't been able to watch anything on Hulu.
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It seems it still applies to the USA only. You can probably blame region-based content licensing for all these artificial limitations.
Yep. (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems it still applies to the USA only. You can probably blame region-based content licensing for all these artificial limitations.
Just like how we can't pay a British TV license fee and watch iPlayer content in the USA.
This is a US-based website. A few people need to realize that and get over it.
The tagline wording could have been better - ie. "Hulu Plus no longer invitation-only", but this is Slashdot - it's not like people expect (or ever see) high journalistic standards applied here.
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Yes, but they do mention that they are trying to extend Hulu outside the US - that is the message displayed to me every time I see an embedded Hulu player on a webpage at least.
US Definition (Score:4, Informative)
What is the definition of all here?
It's the US definition, similar in meaning to their definition of 'world' in 'world series baseball'.
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Or it's that the target audience of the story is American users of Hulu and thus it is only targeted to one group. Clearly no one in any other country uses the terms "us" or "all" to only refer to people inside their own country.
Context (Score:3, Insightful)
Or it's that the target audience of the story is American users of Hulu
If the story was posted on a Hulu user site that might be excusable. Using 'us', if the writer was from the US, would be imprecise but not wrong. Were I posting on a site specifically linked to one country then yes, use of 'all' to mean 'all in that country' would be fine too. However using 'all' on an internationally read site to mean "only US" is just wrong. This site is supposed to be "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" not "News for US nerds. Stuff that matters to americans." If it were I would not be
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Slashdot seems to be very U.S.-centric. Do you have any plans to be more international in your scope?
Slashdot is U.S.-centric. We readily admit this, and really don't see it as a problem. Slashdot is run by Americans, after all, and the vast majority of our readership is in the U.S. We're certainly not opposed to doing more international stories, but we don't have any formal plans for making that happen. All we can really tell you is that if you're outside the U.S. and you have news, submit it, and if it looks interesting, we'll post it.
FAQ [slashdot.org] By CmdrTaco
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Since when did "US-centric" mean "US-only"?
It would seem fair that 'US-centric' allows for statements that globally apply inside the US, but not outside it. A 'US-centric' site might say something like 'everyone eats at McDonalds', even while this is patently untrue in, say, Antarctica or on Mars. But it is indeed true in the US.
Besides, it isn't as if slashdot saying something would somehow bind hulu into offering you service overseas - which I assume is what you're REALLY after. Otherwise you'd be making quite a lot about almost nothing, and wo
Re:Context (Score:4, Insightful)
The story was only aimed at current users of Hulu.
Really? How from the headline "Hulu Plus Now Available To All — But Be Warned" did you figure that? You see, as someone not in the US this suggested that, while Hulu itself was US limited, that perhaps when paying for content the license to distribute might allow international use since real money is involved so rights owners would be being recompensed.
Using 'us', if the writer was from the US, would be imprecise but not wrong.
Why would it be wrong?
not: negation of a word or group of words as in "not wrong"
So then you equally whine about stories that are only relevant to people in the UK?...
You are missing the point. It is not the relevance at issue, it is the assumption that 'all' means just the US which is an attitude sadly only too common in the US.
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If, as you claim, the best players all play in the US then what's the harm in having them compete against you. I mean a US team would win all the time right? Having a national championship is fine but calling it the world series would be like Britain calling the F.A. cup the "World C
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Major League Players Born in Cuba [baseball-almanac.com]
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Exactly what I was thinking. Hardly "everyone"..
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That's not true, The Blue Jays participate in the World Series but Canada can't access.
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So did cuba.
Re:All? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, so much like the definition of "world" when the US talks about the "World Series".
All generally does imply everyone. "All in the US" has a different meaning, because it adds specificity.
The summary doesn't specify one way or the other, and having not researched Hulu Plus fully, I didn't actually know if "All" meant "the world" or not - they have been showing me "we are trying to bring content to your region, please be patient with us" messages every time I see an embedded player on a webpage that tries to show me a Hulu video in the UK. For all I know, that's what Hulu Plus is about. I guess not.
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Reminds me of the sports broadcast in Total Recall where the World Series finalists are the Tokyo Samurai and the Toronto Blue Jays.
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You are quite correct that the headline, summary are misleading. They take the phrasing "all" from the article, which is also misleading. Unless IT World is a US-only publication. Which would be funny in itself.
Speaking as a US citizen, however, please know that many of us don't give a damn about baseball. There was no national referendum where we decided to let Major League Baseball declare a "world" series. The Tokyo little league champions may well be better than the San Francisco Giants. To be fair, how
Re:All? (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm... no.
World series origin [snopes.com]
Sounds....great?? (Score:2)
So I pay the same as netflix just for the chance to watch crappy network TV? Ill opt to take my $10 elsewhere.
I bet this fails. Miserably. People will pay or watch commercials, but not both. They learned their lessons from the move to cable TV. Plus they expect more now.
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Re:Sounds....great?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that they still pay for cable TV and they still watch commercials on it. If anyone's learned a lesson from the move to cable TV it's the networks learning that people will do both.
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I pay for cable, and I also have both a PS3 and PC that can display on the TV in my livingroom, and regularly use the TV for internet delivered video. I also have Netflix. I'm not sure that mid-30s makes me an "old fogie", but whatever.
I prefer not to pay for access and have commercials, given the option, but there is enough content that I (or, at least, the people living in my house collectively) want th
Re:Sounds....great?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that they still pay for cable TV and they still watch commercials on it. If anyone's learned a lesson from the move to cable TV it's the networks learning that people will do both.
My DVR says hi.
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My DVR says hi.
Marketing may involve a lot of crystal balls and tea leaves, but if they ran huge ad campaigns with no sales response we'd know. So at least a good share of the viewers do watch ads...
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If anyone's learned a lesson from the move to cable TV it's the networks learning that people will do both.
they'll do both when there 's no other option. with netflix and itunes and amazon VOD there are other options.
They are paying to have cable (Score:5, Insightful)
People understand the idea of paying to get a service. You pay the cable company to get cable TV. For that you are a stupendous amount of channels that they deliver. However the programs themselves are separate, those require ads. Fine. When you buy an addon though, that is no ads. So you buy HBO. Those channels cost extra. Fine, you are paying to have no ads. It is a cost separate from the service.
Well now things are on the Internet. Again, people are ok with paying for the Internet. You pay the cable company, they give you Internet. Wonderful. However the content on the Internet is different, some of it has ads. Also fine. Then you have some pay for services on the Internet, like Netflix. Costs money, instead of ads. Also good.
This falls in the new category of "You have to pay for it on top of your service AND get ads." I don't think it is going to fly, particularly not given that there are alternatives. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
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$10/month will get you unlimited Astraweb [astraweb.com]. Or a 180GB chunk for $25 should last you at least a year if all you want it for is TV shows.
SickBeard [sickbeard.com] +
SABnzbd [sabnzbd.org] +
XBMC [xbmc.org]
Is damn near the best DVR solution I've ever seen or used. Only downside is you can't watch stuff "live" or catch up like you can with current DVRs.
And depending on your ethics and federal law you can:
feel bad about it, even though it's legal.
not feel bad about it because it's legal.
feel bad about it, because it's illegal.
not feel bad about it, even t
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How many people complain when they pay their ISP for network access to watch Hulu which has ads? Do you think Hulu should not play ads because you pay the ISP for access to it?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're paying the cable company to transfer the data, the networks are providing the content supported by ads.
The OP was saying that "people learned their lesson from cable TV" and wouldn't pay and watch ads. And yet they don't complain when they pay and watch ads with hulu now. If it's a lesson learned from cable, then more people would complain that they're paying and watching ads on the current hul
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I have both, and in many ways HuluPlus is superior to Netflix. I'm probably overpaying by about half, and I do want them to take my dollars and reinvest them, but for the completely-TV-free household, we do appreciate having both.
Some examples:
Law and Order - Netflix has them all, and so does Plus. On Plus they'll play back-to-back-to-back. On Netflix you have to press play on each and every one. If you just want something on in the background while, say, playing WoW - go Hulu. If you're looking for on
Europe (Score:3, Interesting)
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Once again, The Netherlands for the win!
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It has to do with the people making the content trying to figure out how to get money for it. See they make movies, but the product they produce is effectively worthless: it can be copied with almost zero cost. So they spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to actually leverage their products to make money, when their products are by definition competing with a distribution service that comes well below their costs and thus has perfect position in a price war.
On the other hand, consumers also want
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First of all, what is know as "high-speed" in north america (both Canada and USA) is far slower than what is known as "high-speed" in europe. You might be able to download a movie in a few minutes, but when you have to wait from 2 to 12 hours before you can start watching a movie, you'll choose legal streams instead.
Unfortunately, the selection of Netflix Canada is so bad that so far it's not even worth the 7.99$CAD they're asking for. Hopefully, the selection will get better in a while. I hate these limite
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A speed of 5 mbps is probably the average high-speed connection, at least in a lot of rural areas of Canada. However, at around 500 kilobytes per second, assuming a DivX file of 700 megabytes, it means 1400 seconds (about 24 minutes) if your connection is peaking 100% of the time. A lot of ISPs throttle P2P and torrents, some inject "disconnection" packets to disrupt the transfers, some lower the non-standard-ports connection speeds during the day.
In short, most people won't be able to get a movie in 6 to 1
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That's why Netflix took so long to get here, and why Hulu still isn't (AFAIK) available in Canada.
That's also why we will sometimes see "due to licensing restrictions, this content is not available in your region" on some Youtube/dailymotion, etc videos.
Ad why DVDs have region codes.
It's all the corporations who made the show wanting to maintain control of it after
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Re:Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
This allows the masses to watch Hulu on their TV through a PS3, Roku or whatever else adds the option. I know that's trivial to computer geeks that have a computer hooked up to their TV already, but the geeks are in the minority. It's also easier for the masses versus downloading via torrent (ignoring the legal issues for now). Some things are worth paying a little for.
I already pay for cable and a DVR, so I don't see any need for this. It makes it slightly more plausible to cut cable entirely and just go with Hulu/Netflix/Internet for "TV" watching, though.
I also imagine that content will start to be exclusive to Hulu Plus as an enticement to getting people to sign up.
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Yes, plugging in an HDMI cable from the computer to the TV is much harder than plugging an HDMI cable from the PS3 to the TV.
Re:Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
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So NO it not just as easy as snaking a cable from your PC.
I know all this becasue i spent the last decade trying to make a HTPC that is as easy to use as a plug-in piece of hardware.
Hahahah FAIL.
1) Buy a small quite box that can sit near your TV w/ HDMI and hi-def capabilities ....
a) Acer Revo
b) Zotac Mag
c)
2) Install XBMC
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It is more about doing things legally. Yes, I could torrent the shows I want to watch, but I would rather royalties go back to the studios that brought the shows to me, so they can go back and make more of that show. If you steal the shows you love, you kind of shoot yourself in the foot.
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I know Canada has a similar law. I would be HARD PRESSED to have the same view, if I was already being charged for each blank CD/DVD... assuming that I would be downloading and loading them up with movies/music. If I am being charged for it anyway, might as well use it. I am completely with you there.
As for stealing... I disagree. Different basic views there. We won't see eye to eye on that. :-) You are stealing the time that goes into producing it. Not exactly the final product... but it is splittin
Because we live in Amerika. (Score:5, Funny)
Because we live in Amerika, where politicians are bought and paid for by the big media companies. Unlike European countries (yeah, I am making a gross generalization here) where your politicians at least make an half-hearted attempt to protect your rights. Ours sold them at firesale prices to the content companies. So we're to either pay up or face insane fines and/or jail terms.
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"So we're to either pay up or face insane fines and/or jail terms."
Not really. Again, the only people who seem to get caught are those who are technologically inept. I mean, sure, they get hit with insane fines and/or jail terms, but if you're not like them, the chances of you getting caught for such a harmless action are slim to none.
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...your politicians at least make an half-hearted attempt to protect your rights. Ours sold them at firesale prices to the content companies. So we're to either pay up or face insane fines and/or jail terms.
So we have a RIGHT to use someone else's content without their consent?
I can see having the right to copy something you paid for, but the right to just take for free whatever you wish doesn't seem to be a tenable position.
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I will be more than happy to trade you Hulu for Spotify. Having the ability to listen and queue up any songs with a small subscription fee for no ads (even if I wanted to listen to the same song until my mind shut down), is far more useful than paying for ad-filled Flash content that I rarely have time to watch.
There is nothing like Spotify in the US, and it would be great to just stream stuff from my phone, rather than have to find the songs I want to hear and make sure they are loaded beforehand.
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youtube has at most clips.
besides being illegal, torrents are not as convenient as going to a page and pressing "play".
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Because torrents, YouTube, etc. are usually illegal.
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Torrents are not always available.
Torrents have a tiny risk of virii & trojans
Torrents have a small risk of big legal problems.
Netflix is instant, $10 is cheap (heck $15 is cheap).
Cable has gotten ridiculously expensive. Pricing itself out of the market for many. But they don't care if they lose 3 customers and keep 1 at the higher rate as long as their net profit is $.01 higher. Yield management.
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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 ;)
I've got a Netflix subscription. I generally use it for movies that I can't find elsewhere.
If I just want to see whatever big budget Hollywood thing is out on video I can pick it up pretty much anywhere. We've got a locally-owned rental store... We've got a Blockbuster... We've got a few of those Redbox kiosks... I can get the big budget stuff pretty much anywhere.
But if I want to watch something older or less mainstream, I've got a serious problem getting my hands on it. None of my local options carr
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"Legal movies?"
Considering the fact that you have to be technologically inept to get caught in the first place, how does this add value to the subscriptions?
huluPLUS should be huluDIFFERENT (Score:2, Insightful)
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If you pay for huluPLUS can you not watch hulu regular? If they both have ads, will you notice the difference? Is there something else that implies you aren't getting your money's worth?
Even netflix/crunchyroll/etc don't have all their content in HD. Crunchyroll in particular uses the same pricing model (except for no ads if you pay): A lot of things are free with ads, but only in low def, and you get new shows a week late. If you pay $7/mo you get HD for any shows they have it, new shows when they ai
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I actually like Crunchyroll's model, and it's nice they have some apps too (iPod Touch and iPad, etc.) but unfortunately they only have a couple shows I want to watch active, and the ease of torrenting it outweighs the cost of paying.
So they basically spoiled it for the masses. (Score:2)
Well, go figure that Hulu decided to spoil it now that the unwashed masses get a chance at it.
Hulu +/- (Score:5, Funny)
So if it adds some content to Just Plain Hulu, but meanwhile doesn't include all of the content from Just Plain Hulu, wouldn't that it make it "Hulu Plus Or Minus"?
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Welcome to fuzzy differential equations? ;)
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Hulu 2.0: The Search for More Money*
With apologies to Mel Brooks.
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wouldn't that it make it "Hulu Plus Or Minus"?
I'd say that would be more or less correct.
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I'm guessing what the summary means is that just because you have Hulu Plus doesn't mean all the content will be available to watch on a device other than a computer (ie. PS3).
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Not to the comptrollers at "FOX, NBC Universal, ABC, ABC Family, Biography, Lionsgate, Endemol, MGM, MTV Networks, National Geographic, Digital Rights Group, Paramount, PBS, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and more." [hulu.com]
To them it's all +.
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Not Worth It Yet (Score:3, Informative)
Is this just one big joke? (Score:2)
I looked over the show list.....and I can't find any reason why i would want to pay for Hulu Plus, in fact I think i'd have more reason to pay for the main Hulu site than Plus, because the shows available are different. And then I remember they both have ads anyway, and neither of them have shows I actually would pay for like Showtime content or HBO stuff.
No one but the cable and satellite companies (who don't actually make the product I actually want, shows) seem to want my money, it's a shame.
hulu = failing (Score:3, Informative)
Hulu has a number of problems right now which, I imagine, probably translate over to their paid subscriptions:
* Poor performance due to Flash. The latest versions of Flash have caused nothing but problems for us at home - surprisingly, worse on Windows than on Linux. We'll occasionally have to restart the browser 1-3 times throughout a show due to dropped frames and choppiness resulting from Flash leakages and the like.
* Ads. They're not only getting more obnoxious but they're getting longer and more frequent. (That one about the 'skittles tree-boy' has to be the most offensive, disturbing ad I've ever seen.)
* Decreasing content. A lot of what used to be there, is no longer (BSG). No, I don't care if I can watch a show's latest 5 episodes: character development is important to me. If I can't watch the beginning of a season (particularly if it's a drama), I'm going to skip the show.
Add in the lack of the downsides, and I don't see the benefit. Maybe for $1-5, but certainly not for $10/mo.
Why would anyone pay for this (Score:2)
Firstly, I'm not paying for ads. Period. That's the reason why I ditched my TV too.
Secondly, I like documentaries, British comedy and things like the Daily Show or South Park (well, at least when SP was good). There is plenty of all that for free on Youtube and the kajillion video-hosting clones out there, especially on Chinese video sites that don't give a flying fuck about US copyrights. All my TV needs are fulfilled by the internet already.
For older movies or shows, there's emule or bittorrent, and I don
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and I don't even feel bad about using them because older movies are difficult to get hold of. Try to get Nash Bridges episodes legally to see what I mean.
Yeah it was so hard that it took all of 2 seconds searching on Amazon to find: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddvd&field-keywords=nash+bridges&x=0&y=0 [amazon.com]
Wait, what was your point?
Re:Why would anyone pay for this (Score:4, Insightful)
Netflix has the DVDs. For $9 a month they will deliver them to your door, and let you use their streaming service.
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For-Pay Hulu's obviously not right for you. I don't really agree with your assumption that it's therefore good for no one.
There is a reason why market research people spend a lot of money doing random samples instead of just coming to slashdot, reading the comments, and calling it a day.
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The only streaming site I pay is Crunchyroll.com [crunchyroll.com], because it gives no ads to paying customers and is the only place I can legally pay for anime without buying overpriced DVDs. Of course their selection is kinda limited, but I like to think it makes up a little for all the stuff I torrent.
So, the only reason to pay is if you legitimately want to contribute to the production company through a non-evil distributor. Ads for paying customers automatically make them evil.
So In Other Words.... (Score:2)
What are you paying for? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I tried it in the invitation phase (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently Hulu plus is not made for me at all.
Logging in and out of the plus account to watch different shows, seeing that there was NOT ONE SINGLE THING that was on hulu plus that I wanted but could not get from Hulu or Netflix was really annoying.
I had signed up for support for other devices, but since it really didn't add anything, I dropped it after one annoying month.
I guess it is just a geek thing, but imo if you want your TV to do something that your computer can do, just connect your computer to your TV, it isn't that hard, you don't even really need a special cable nowadays as many comps come with hdmi ports. (My "TV" computer us a $150 cheapo machine that does the job just fine.)
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The term "available to all" is talking about it being available to all people that regular Hulu is already available to. Yes, yes, we know for the 5 millionth time that it's not available to Europe, etc etc. Do we really need to beat this dead horse in every Hulu story?
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So long as hulu 'plus' doesn't have all of 'hulu' content, non starter.
If hulu plus is a strict superset and ad-free or much cheaper, then I'll think about it.
My preference is that netflix get all the content and I'll happily ignore hulu altogether.
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I'm pretty sure (The Daily Show) and Cobert are available on Comedy Central's site within a day.
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Always easy to spot the alcoholics on the internet.
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Why am I always without mod points when I need them? +1 funny to you, sir.
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Everyone else is collateral incitement.
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The whole point of watching TV online is to NOT pay for it.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The whole point of paying to watch TV online is not having to manage your own DVR. When you can get everything you want directly online without having to worry about cats and/or baseball games (or viruses, etc), why not plunk down a few extra dollars? Time saved is money earned.