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Subscription-Based 'Hulu Plus' Is Now Official
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.'"
Netflix already does that. HD too, even on pc.
what are they thinking?
My guess is that they're thinking that timeliness is worth something. Not everybody wants to wait 6 months from the time an episode airs to watch it on Netflix. In fact, I think the overlap between Hulu and Netflix is actually very small, as Netflix doesn't feature content until it makes it to DVD, or in many cases even 30 days after that, and Hulu doesn't feature content after a season has finished airing.
Cable originally started with "no ads" as the big selling point. After only a few years, the "no ads" was only on the "premium channels" for which you paid even more, while regular cable got more and more ads as the number of different channels kept increasing.
At least Hulu is just starting off admitting they need the ads along with the subscription fee. This is probably to cover costs of getting permission to provide the shows and also is probably just enough to cover network bandwidth of the high-volume movie watchers.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Because they're charging for stuff that used to be free. That's why.
This does not replace regular Hulu. Go read up on this before you fly off the handle.
Au contrair, the stuff they're now charging for access to started quietly slipping off of the site months ago... Whereas you used to be able to watch entire seasons of programming on Hulu, now only the most recent several episodes are available. Any "flying off the handle" is justified; my own Hulu viewing has been severely curtailed by this development.
It may not be replacing "regular" Hulu, but that's only because "regular" Hulu has been getting stripped down for the past several months... apparently in preparation for this step.
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Yuck. I just have uTorrent grab them automatically from my RSS feed with filters for the show I want. Took me 20 minutes to set up. I spend 6.2 seconds a week maintaining it, all my TV shows just magically appear.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.