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Hulu Plus Now Available To All — But Be Warned 348

Posted by Soulskill from the plus-or-minus dept.
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."
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Hulu Plus Now Available To All — But Be Warned More

Hulu Plus Now Available To All — But Be Warned

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  • All? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by meza ( 414214 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:08PM (#34140202)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      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)

        by name_already_taken ( 540581 )

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jo_ham ( 604554 )

          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)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:16PM (#34140326) Journal

      What is the definition of all here?

      It's the US definition, similar in meaning to their definition of 'world' in 'world series baseball'.

      • 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)

          by Roger W Moore ( 538166 )

          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

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by paintballer1087 ( 910920 )

            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

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Roger W Moore ( 538166 )
              Since when did "US-centric" mean "US-only"?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by BobMcD ( 601576 )

                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

    • Exactly what I was thinking. Hardly "everyone"..

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by santax ( 1541065 )
      I am afraid that you're wrong. People expect less for more money these days. And they take it. Seems like somewhere along the line we got a whole civilization with a masochist-gen activated. It's the only way to explain the success of T-Mobile, Microsoft Windows, and Dr. Phill.

    • Re:Sounds....great?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:20PM (#34140390) Homepage

      People will pay or watch commercials, but not both. They learned their lessons from the move to cable TV.

      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.

      • They pay for cable because they are old fogies who don't want the intertubes to interfere with their TV. I think the market of people who will pay for internet, pay for Hulu, deal with getting a PC hooked up and browser open every time they watch, *and* sit through ads when all that is done will be much smaller than the market for cable TV with ads.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • They pay for cable because they are old fogies who don't want the intertubes to interfere with their TV.

          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)

        by irondonkey ( 1137243 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:40PM (#34140694)

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          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...

      • 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)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @04:10PM (#34141142)

        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.

    • $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

      • It really is an awesome combination. Personally, I prefer boxee over xbmc. But I have that all on an old netbook using an external drive, and it's been a terrific media center. And boxee is a surprisingly good frontend for games and emulators as well.
    • 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.

      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)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:47PM (#34140788)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • You're paying the ISP to transfer the data, Hulu is providing the content which is supported by the ads.

          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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BobMcD ( 601576 )

      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)

    by santax ( 1541065 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:14PM (#34140282)
    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 ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rotide ( 1015173 )
      For one, I'm just finishing Battlestar Galactica. I never saw it on tv so this is my first run through. I have watched the whole series (new one, minus the first 2 episodes that are disc only, go figure) on Netflix in HD. It's also a great way to watch random movies without having to sort through torrents, wait for them to finish, upload them to my htpc, etc. Also helps that I only get OTA programming. I also refuse to pay $80+/mo for TV.
      • The first two episodes are actually a mini-series (about 3 hours in total for the two "episodes"), presumably they have different licensing rights and that's why you can't watch them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by santax ( 1541065 )
        I didn't realize you had to pay 80/month for tv. That's about whay I pay for a year. But I don't have a decoder so I have like 40 channels with crap instead of 400 channels with crap. I can understand the added value now btw of netflix, but I'm not concerned about torrents because I have a fast connection and in the Netherlands it is legal to download movies and/or music.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tivoKlr ( 659818 )

          Once again, The Netherlands for the win!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by santax ( 1541065 )
            If only they would say that on the European Songfestival :( No wonder we need all that marijuana here ;)

    • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by santax ( 1541065 )
        Didn't knew about the internetspeeds. I do have 5mb available so a dvd is here in about 12 minutens, a iso rip about 5/6 minutes. And as I said earlier, it's legal here to download movies. But those are all valid points you mention. Combined with other peoples awnsers here, I'm starting to see why you like these services.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

          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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kent_eh ( 543303 )
        It ain't the CRTC doing this, it's the content producers and their wanting to license their stuff under a separate deal for every country.
        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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cforciea ( 1926392 )
      The benefit to Netflix or Hulu over a torrent or youtube is that you get material that you'd have to break copyright law to obtain through these other venues. We pay for it because it is convenient and legal.

    • Re:Europe (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sepodati ( 746220 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:28PM (#34140528) Homepage

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

        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)

          by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:44PM (#34140750) Journal
          That is not the issue at all. First of all your PC might not recognize your TV, you might need drivers, sound might not work over PC HDMI, or you have to go to sound properties and change things to get it to pump sound via HDMI. Then you get to the whole mess of how to control it (keyboard in the living room is unsightly), updates pestering you in the middle of a movie, need a new codec, it goes on and on. 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.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

            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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rifter13 ( 773076 )

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by santax ( 1541065 )
        Well I can follow your reasoning. However I want to state this once and for all. In the Netherlands we pay 25cent on every blanco cdrom/dvd. In return we can fill them with music or movies. We already payed for it, even when not actually watching the movies. Besides, it's not stealing when you just open your eyes and watch something. You don't take anything away from anyone. So it's never stealing to watch a movie. Only when you make up a law that says: you cannot use your body the way it's meant to be, it

        • 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)

      by Lead Butthead ( 321013 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:35PM (#34140624) Journal

      Why do you guys want to pay for this?

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by santax ( 1541065 )
        Make no mistakes. Our politicians are at least the bitches yours are ;)

      • "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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BobMcD ( 601576 )

        ...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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

      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.

    • youtube has at most clips.

      besides being illegal, torrents are not as convenient as going to a page and pressing "play".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Because torrents, YouTube, etc. are usually illegal.

    • 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.

    • 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

  • skimming over the hulu vs hulu plus, it's a toss up of whether to pay: hulu vs hulu plus: last 5 episodes of current popular shows, whereas plus gives you all current season of 45 popular shows. 800 full seasons from hundreds of shows vs full series runs for over 90 shows Kinda seems like they should rename from huluPLUS(misnomer assumes you get hulu PLUS extras) to huluDIFFERENT

    • 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

      • 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.

  • Well, go figure that Hulu decided to spoil it now that the unwashed masses get a chance at it.

  • Hulu +/- (Score:5, Funny)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:17PM (#34140334) Homepage

    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"?

  • Not Worth It Yet (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tenshigure ( 1105825 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:22PM (#34140428)
    After having been a part of the beta "testing" of Hulu Plus, I feel that the limited benefits they provide don't outweigh the costs just yet. For one thing, you still are having to sit through commercials (which have increased to 2x 60-second commercials at times); combine that with the fact that a good chunk of the shows I'd want to watch from Hulu.com aren't even available through the PS3 app nor on my iPhone, and I felt I wasted the two months I spent on the service. Sure, the fact you're not limited to 5 episodes back is a good feature, but it definitely isn't worth the $15 they're asking for. I know I could pick up PlayOn for a similar experience, but it really irks me that they can't provide several of these shows through their Hulu Plus apps but are perfectly capable of having them on Hulu Desktop.

  • 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)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:25PM (#34140480)

    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.

  • 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

    • 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)

      by h4rr4r ( 612664 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @03:42PM (#34140726)

      Netflix has the DVDs. For $9 a month they will deliver them to your door, and let you use their streaming service.

    • 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.

    • 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.

  • Based on the reading of the summary (I don't care enough about Hulu to RTFA), it sounds like this is just another case of someone taking something good....and making it worse. This brings back memories of pre-ad Pandora, pre-ad Disney channel, Halo before the days of weapon loadouts, and cars before the days of electronic locks that fault for no apparent damn reason and leave you with one door incapable of opening.... *sigh*

  • What are you paying for? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hawguy ( 1600213 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @04:03PM (#34141024)

    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)

    by netsavior ( 627338 ) on Friday November 05, 2010 @04:20PM (#34141250)
    I do not have dish, cable or over the air TV, my living room LCD is connected to a computer, which plays DVDs, blew-Ray disks, ripped movies, old Tivo recordings from when I had cable, netflix, hulu, and occasionally CBS.com's craptacular website.

    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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