Rumors of Hulu's Subscription Plans

whychevron found a story discussing Hulu's plan to offer subscriptions. The rumor is that $10 a month will grant paying users the ability to get episodes older than the last five, while the current five episodes remain ad-supported. This starts pitting Hulu even more squarely against iTunes for anyone who watches more than a few shows a month.

Comments

I'd pay it

[FredFredrickson]

I'd pay for it - if they stopped being dicks.

That means, if I could watch it on my xbox 360 (either official support, or they stop playing cat and mouse with playon.) and put support for hulu on the roku.

Ever since the last update, playon has had to do a screen capture instead of decrypting the original stream. That gets far less performance and kills my server.

Also I have to point out that the article mistakenly compares paying $10 for hulu (on demand) vs just watching it on "tv for free". I wonder if the author of the article still lives in his mom's basement.

Re:I'd pay it

[MBGMorden]

That's about where I'm at on it too. I like the idea of Hulu, but I simply don't want to watch TV sitting at my computer monitor. In the past I've kept a regular computer hooked to the TV and just used the regular interface to pull stuff up, but it's just gotten frustrating to keep a mouse and keyboard by the TV. If they can't integrate it into something I can use with a remote (Windows Media Center, MythTV, Xbox 360, anything), then I'm just not bothering. I'm ESPECIALLY not subscribing.

It's a shame though. If they managed to partner with some of these services I'd happily pay $10 a month for it. It beats the heck out of a $60 per month satellite bill.

Re:I'd pay it

[causality]

I use Boxee in this case as there is some integration made for Hulu. Problem I see with Hulu is the limited number of shows (incomplete full seasons).

I wish they'd delete every 4-minute "excerpt" clip and use the space to host more complete episodes, myself. I never knew that brief clips from the middle of a show with little or no context were so popular, yet they are a large amount of the offerings on Hulu and a *majority* of the available videos on Adultswim.com.

Cheaper and better than cable

[Enderandrew]

For some people this really is a great alternative to cable.

It might even be better for networks. Fox said they make more money from Hulu on Simpsons episodes than they do from airing them on TV. And that was before this subscription revenue model existed.

If it wasn't for sports, I'd consider canceling cable/sattelite and just watching content via the internet.