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Subscription-Based 'Hulu Plus' Is Now Official

Posted by kdawson on from the whenever-wherever dept.

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.'"

33 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. HD Sources by therealobsideus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So not only will I be paying $9.99 but I'll also be watching ads? Hmm... no.

    1. Re:HD Sources by FictionPimp · · Score: 2, 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.

    2. Re:HD Sources by Locke2005 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How is that any different from the $33/month people are currently paying for cable TV? Oh, that's right -- this is "on demand", whereas most cable shows need to be TIVOed if you want to watch them on your own schedule. Plus, if you've got an ISP with bandwidth caps, don't even think about subscribing to this.

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    3. Re:HD Sources by StikyPad · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's perfectly fine, yes.. until you catch up. They don't make old shows the way they used to.

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      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
    4. Re:HD Sources by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can do the same thing (I would argue even better) on a PC, just use a TV Tuner (I got a nice ATI USB Tuner for $20 at Woot!) and Windows 7 Media Center. record, skip around, tell it to only record a specific series, can easily and cheaply add space for more recordings, burn recordings, etc.

      As for TFA, am I the only one smelling the gangrene of slow death around Hulu? Who is gonna want to pay $10 a month for a service that has been steadily creeping up the ads, when there is Netflix, DVRs, and of course BT? It seems the greed of the media companies knows no bounds and keeps them from ever learning. I have over a $1000 in DVD box sets and swag from Joss Whedon shows because I was able to catch a couple of episodes of BtVS on P2P. The more people you expose to your product the more related products you can sell them, just look at how much more business the record companies have thanks to cheap DRM free MP3s or how good old games allows game companies to easily sell older product with NO work involved.

      Customers want easy, they want fast, they want cheap. Instead the movie/TV corps are gonna piss everyone off by making them pay money for the privilege of ads and instead of letting Hulu build an international audience and help sell their product will slowly but surely kill it with stupid restrictions and endless greed. Congrats media companies, for proving you STILL don't get it.

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  2. Wait... by TheGreatHegemon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So you pay 9.99, and then still have ads on top of it? Absurd.

    1. Re:Wait... by AnonymousClown · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So you pay 9.99, and then still have ads on top of it? Absurd.

      Worked for cable.

      --
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      July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001

    2. Re:Wait... by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Cable though you didn't have a choice. With the internet, we do. Hulu isn't competing against cable, Hulu is competing against torrents. So lets do a comparison here.

      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.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:Wait... by kithrup · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unskippable ads. Unlike with cable (with a DVR), where you can fast forward or skip through them, if you've recorded it.

    4. Re:Wait... by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2, 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.

      --
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    5. Re:Wait... by ThisIsForReal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Antennas are great. You should try one sometime.

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      -THE END-
    6. Re:Wait... by jargon82 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We dumped cable long ago. We have a netflix account, netflix online access for whats on there, which isn't tons, but it's not bad... as well as hulu for what they've got (lots of very current TV content). Presently get about 20 channels (or more? I'm not that sure) over the air. It's enough for us and the kids to have stuff to watch when it matters, and little enough that we don't spend days each week watching TV :) I might well sign up for this if it expands the library a bit, but it depends. Sounds like it could be a bargain compared to other options.

    7. Re:Wait... by Itninja · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most people only pay for cable these days to get cable Internet? I seriously doubt that. Do you have a source?

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    8. Re:Wait... by Mr.+Freeman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I disagree. If you read the comments on the trackers then you can pretty much avoid poor quality rips. To bittorrent something I have to spend about an hour to get it including finding a torrent and then the time to download it. With hulu I just go to hulu.com, type in "family guy", and click play. I have to watch about 2-5 minutes of ads, which is far less than downloading the torrent.

      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".

      --
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    9. Re:Wait... by Hadlock · · Score: 3, 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.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    10. Re:Wait... by Tikkun · · Score: 2, 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.

    11. Re:Wait... by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But it's more expensive than Netflix with advertising and a smaller catalog. Which is the problem. They're not competing with cable, they're competing with Netflix, and if this is the best they can do they aren't going to win.

      $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.

    12. Re:Wait... by interkin3tic · · Score: 2, 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.

    13. Re:Wait... by Lord+Ender · · Score: 2, 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.

      --
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    14. Re:Wait... by BarryJacobsen · · Score: 2, 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.

      --
      Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
    15. Re:Wait... by sixsixtysix · · 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.

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      ...
  3. Goodbye Hulu by Beelzebud · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Was nice knowing you.

    1. Re:Goodbye Hulu by JustinOpinion · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hulu Plus is not meant to replace the normal Hulu.com experience. Everything in the press release basically talks about added features that you can get access to if you're willing to pay... but there is nothing to suggest that they will get rid of the standard way of accessing Hulu: going to the website and streaming whatever episodes are on offer for free (and by 'free' I mean 'watching ads').

      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!

  4. Nice for Netflix by swarm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds like Hulu is doing good advertising for NetFlix to me.

  5. Ad-supported? by eihab · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    If you can't mod them join them.
  6. Anything! by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, 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.

  7. netflix? by farble1670 · · 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?

    1. Re:netflix? by Psyborgue · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A lot of content on Netflix is 720p HD too... and on both my mac and pc Silverlight video is smoother than flash (even with flash 10.1 hardware decoding).

  8. So lets see here by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So lets see I still get A) Ads B) Stupid blocking so I can't watch it on different devices and C) I'd have to wait for an invite?

    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?

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  9. Re:Pay for ads by MBGMorden · · Score: 2, 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.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  10. Speaking of "Entitlement Complex" by Beelzebud · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hulu isn't entitled to my money!

    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..

  11. BitTorrent by slasho81 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm keeping with BitTorrent. It's fast, free, without ads, and has every conceivable show or film in a format displayable on every device/platform.

  12. paid advertisement by Tom · · Score: 2, 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.

    --
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