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Hulu Lowers Prices After Netflix Raises Theirs (variety.com)
Coincidentally, as Netflix raised their prices last week, Hulu decided to lower theirs. The streaming service is now offering a plan, which includes commercials, for $5.99 per month for the first year -- a short-term promotion aimed at luring new subs with the kickoff of the fall television and Hulu's expanded TV library lineup. Variety reports: Hulu's special offer for the limited-commercials plan is available through Jan. 9, 2018, only to new or returning Hulu subs. After one year, the regular $7.99 monthly price will kick in. Hulu offers a commercial-free option for $12 per month, and a live TV service (which includes access to original series like Emmy-winning "The Handmaid's Tale" and on-demand titles) for $40 monthly. A Hulu rep said the company's new promo is intended to draft off the fall 2017 TV season. As it looks for another original series on the order of "Handmaid's Tale" -- so far its only breakout hit -- Hulu has inked deals to bring thousands of current and older TV shows to the platform to armor-up in its battle with rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime.
I'm sorry, but "new promotional rates" is not lowering prices.
1. It doesn't reduce anything for anyone who is already paying.
2. It's a promotional rate. The regular rate is the same.
So, it's a temporary sale to lure in new subscribers. That's different.
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I pay $5.99 for the privilege of watching your commercials?
Tell you what, I'll sign up when the CEO of Hulu comes and sucks my hairy balls. And I'll only charge him $5.99 and he has to listen to me talk about my fantasy football team and the cute thing my cat did. For three hours. While he sucks my hairy balls.
Honestly, the cheek of these bastards. Do they not know how the whole idea of "commercials" works?
You are welcome on my lawn.
To even mention the limited commercials price is extremely misleading.
What I see in the article is that Netflix offers a $7.99 / month plan for a single stream non-HD commercial-free stream or $10.99 / month for the standard HD plan, and Hulu's lowest commercial free option is apparently $12 / month.
So, the article says Hulu is more expensive than Netflix unless you're willing to listen to commercials at which time it becomes the same price as the lowest price commercial-free Netflix plan (after the bait-and-switch promotion completes).
does this magical antenna thing work on your phone or tablet?
Hulu would have to pay me $5.99 a month.
I noticed that Hulu recently increased the numbers ads in between breaks: I believe from 4 to 5 now. It seems close to interminable. In some cases recently I've finished my dinner and just shut off the program before it could get back.
Since it's inception they've been ratcheting up the ads per break. I think 2 to begin with, now up to 5. I wonder where the end-point is.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Are offering a very competitive rate. You pay $0 per month, which comes out to $0 per year. Torrents are also commercial free. They offer an impressive library of new and old content including access to original series like Emmy-winning "The Handmaid's Tale." Compared to Netflix and Hulu offerings this is an impressive deal indeed, and it's not some kind of teaser rate that expires after a few months. The $0 fees for torrents are going to last well beyond the 2017 season.
does this magical antenna thing work on your phone or tablet?
I don't necessarily agree with everything else the gp said, but with Tablo you can watch antenna TV on your mobile device:
https://www.tablotv.com/blog/a...
I think this promotion is to try to deal with the massive rejection of the "New Hulu Experience", i.e. the new interface that sucks and has received massive negative feedback. Hulu has no plans to go back to the previous interface. Many are voting with their wallet, myself included, and dropping Hulu.
The whole point of moving to streaming is to get away from the 10-15 minutes of commercials. It's way past the point of ridiculous. I can't even watch regular TV anymore. Netflix+Prime has allowed me to ditch the ads, and I ain't never going back!
If Hulu is ADDING to the number of ads, I don't really expect them to be around much longer...
665: The mark on the forehead of Satan's slightly less evil brother, Stan.
All they need to do now us roll back that useless FUBAR interface they pushed out recently. Thats why they are hemorrhaging subscribers.
On the one hand, I'm happy to see anyone taking Netflix down a notch.
On the other hand, Hulu is the team effort of Disney, Fox, and Comcast -- and I can't really cheer for any of those guys.
It has a commercial-free tier, with some network-exclusive content. That was the only time they interested me. I'd have never paid them to watch commercials. Once you go commercial free, you really can't go back.
Only it was "mostly" commercial free (a few exceptions). And they also pasted a bug in the corner of the screen advertising the local affiliate station, which was distracting to me (that's an awesome way to make torrents look better than paid subscriptions). And I found I just didn't watch all that much TV anyhow, certainly not enough to justify subscribing to yet another streaming service (which may very well happen to Disney as well).
So, no more Hulu for me.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
AND want you to watch ads? Huh. That sounds familiar for some reason ... and equally odious.
Hulu has 17% of the market and climbing. Some people clearly want it.
Netflix also got there by having streaming early on that was better than Hulu and without commercials.
It's $10/month for me, no big deal. And broadcast really doesn't have that much. Ie, Doctor Who, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and so forth. Sure, wait long enough on broadcast and stuff shows up in syndication, and you will get "edited for content/time" movies as well.
If I didn't have internet then your argument might make sense as adding in the boradband capable ISP is by far the bulk of the cost for streaming.
Of course, you could be like where my mother is; the internet is terrible and digital TV can't be received except for one lousy channel. So paying for the lowest tier of satellite is needed to get the local television stations.
But I will never pay for Hulu.
Netflix isn't perfect and the price increase is mildly annoying I guess. One more dollar a month? I can deal with it. Hulu with no commercials is still more expensive and I still haven't finished watching everything I want to watch on Netflix.
And compared to what I was paying for cable before I cut the cord it's completely insignificant.
But why is Netflix raising their prices by a whole dollar considered news anyway?
Is it news when Comcast raises the price of their service by more than that or when they drop a bunch of channels from the basic plan?
One thing that's great about Netflix is I know how much it will cost from month to month and if there's ever a price increase Slashdot or some other internet news will warn me about it - lord knows Netflix never talks to me. I don't even know if they have a current email address.
But with cable TV you never know what your monthly bill will be and if they tell you one price you know they're neglecting a bunch of add-on fees and it will go up or channels will be removed.
With Netflix, I guess I'll lose Disney movies but I haven't even mustered up the patience to watch that Star Wars movie that's on Netflix because there's other stuff I'd rather watch.
After the change to the watchlist that instead of just being the programs I wanted to watch in the order I wanted to watch, setting + on a season, I just got so frustrated with their new watchlist that I 'tuned out'. Sent them a 'please return it how it was, it worked' message and got the "no, you're wrong, this is far better way to manage your subscriptions" response. Then not having anything new to watch for months on end, but it dropping things I'd previously subbed to. Then adding programs I didn't want to watch in my list because they thought I might be interested, when I don't even speak spanish, why's it offering me programmes to watch in a language I don't understand? And the ads, oh my goodness the ads. The same ones over and over and over and over. I'd try to adblock but it stopped the site working (fair enough, they need ad revenue I guess), then offered a 'watch without the ads' deal, but I feel the prior months of the same ads over and over and over was just torture to make the new package seems better value. And then those ads that forced you to do some survey. I want to passively watch, not start answering questions on the name of the actor in Magnum PI. And I can't quit/skip unless I mash a few buttons for a bit. I'm just... burned out. Gave up on hulu. It could/should have been great, and there's bound to be later sites that do what early Hulu did, that'll be popular. But what Hulu ended up being, an ad network you have to pay for, that's slow and clunky to use, keeps getting worse every few months, nope, cancelled a month ago.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
What is this "limited commercials" of which Hulu speaks? I've got that subscription and a single 45 minute episode of Shark Tank has 6 commercail breaks of 2 minutes each. How is 20% of the running time being commercials being "limited"?
You are poor and can't pay $11 a month to NOT watch commercials AND have a wider selection of content? Who's the idiot now? I don't know if you're trolling or not, but your "DROPS MIC" bit is super cringy. No wonder you posted as AC.
As others have said, Hulu is offering promotional prices to mitigate losses after an enormous interface blunder. Hulu split their content flagging into 2 systems, Watchlist and MyStuff. But the two systems don't talk to each. The result is that users can "save" shows via the web, but they can't see those shows on their Roku. The same is true in the other direction. Thousands of folks are going to their Roku's, discovering that the interface is new, clunky, and all of their shows and content are missing. These price changes are a mitigation to avoid large subscription losses.