
Hulu’s Live TV service to cost $39.99/month with ads, sources say - artsandsci
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/13/hulus-live-tv-service-to-cost-39-99-per-month-with-ads-sources-say/
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dawnerd
I love that these companies want to take advantage of cord cutters yet come in
with cable prices and bundles - exactly why people cut cable to begin with.
Even sling tv moved deep into bundle territory. Just let me pick the exact
channels I want.

~~~
WorldMaker
Most of us don't even want "channels": we want specific shows. If you still
want to call a bundle of shows a "channel", that's fine, but you should curate
it a lot differently than the cable model of "channel", but the natural term
in cord-cutting world for a bundle of shows seems to be more "app" or "site".

As a long time cord cutter, I can't tell you how many conversations the answer
from me to "What channel is it on?" was legitimately Hulu or Netflix or
Amazon.

~~~
gregmac
> Most of us don't even want "channels": we want specific shows.

That, and have different viewing habits.

I am watching a very small number of shows (usually somewhere between 1 and 3)
at any given time, and watch the entire season (or sometimes multiple seasons)
before moving onto something else. For shows where I'm caught up with the most
recent season but are released as one episode a week, I wait until they're
done the season before starting the first episode.

Also, when I want to watch a show, I want to watch a show. I do not schedule
my life around TV. I do not care that it's 12 minutes past the hour, or that
new episodes come out on Wednesdays, or that I missed watch last week's
episode.

Old cable TV considers DVR the solution here, and this service looks to have
"cloud DVR" but that misses the point. Netflix has no "DVR" because you can
just press play and watch any show they have. I assume you have to press
"record" in advance in order for it to be in your DVR -- maybe it's really
advanced and it'll "record" the show from the start even if it's already
started.

Realistically, a "Cloud DVR" is basically just a whole bunch of files storing
each show, and a database entry that says user x has access to file y.
Pressing "record" is what makes that database entry, with arbitrary rules that
say you can't do it if the "air date" is in the past, and you can only have
just so many database entries that total up to 200 hours of content.

It's not much different than Netflix, except that Netflix doesn't have the
access control database or arbitrary rules.

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tfandango
I feel like the "Cloud DVR" is kind of a legal workaround, probably because of
the contracts they have with media providers. PlayStation Vue has one and it
sometimes offers you "recorded" content and sometimes "on-demand", which is
subtly different and mostly doesn't matter. Creators and providers are dragged
into the future kicking and screaming, while Netflix and the like are eating
their lunch.

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WorldMaker
I feel like "Cloud DVR" is as much of an intentional missing-the-point on the
part of traditional players in the market. It still feels a lot like "based on
how popular the Tivo originally was, people really want a DVR" and missing the
point that regardless of the technology actually used: people just wanted to
watch shows on their schedule, not some overpaid executive's schedule based on
astrology readings and Nielsen surveys (which may as well be astrology
readings themselves).

Beyond maybe being a legal workaround and maybe being a way to not confuse old
people used to decades of cable subscription: Continuing to apply "Cloud DVR"
as a terminology for and its "modern VCR" skeumorphism to services like
PlayStation Vue continues the tradition of treating "live TV" as "the real
thing" and on-demand/Cloud DVR as the exception and the lesser experience.
It's hard not to see that as a willful ignorance from the existing players
that they might still have hope to put the genie back into the bottle and
return to the halcyon days where people lived to TV schedules and captive
eyeballs were guaranteed delivered to very happy advertisers.

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penpapersw
We're going on a _half century_ of still-good television and films that have
already been made! That's probably more TV than someone could watch in a whole
lifetime! Even if all you do is borrow DVDs from the library (usually for
free), you can still get an hour or two of quality video entertainment every
night for a few decades (if not the rest of your life!) without ever seeing
any new television/film content made after today. So the TV/film industry's
"need" to produce (all too often low-quality) content 24/7 is no longer
something anyone has to put up with!

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untog
Except for consistent audience draws like sports, and (to a lesser extent)
news coverage. Those are the lifelines of the cable TV industry, and no-one
has solved that problem yet.

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penpapersw
It's only consistent because they've lowered people's standards over time,
like boiling a frog. The sooner people realize there's better ways to spend
their time, and that they can get better and more relevant news and sports
coverage much quicker than traditional TV by using the internet properly (on
their phones presumably), they'll be that much quicker to jump ship and move
to things like Netflix or library DVDs.

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josefresco
Inching closer and closer to Big Cable prices. Considering most streamers have
both Netflix and Hulu, the cost of "cutting the cable" is slowly becoming
noncompetitive.

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JohnTHaller
It was cheaper for me to uncut cable. 90 a month for internet. 75 for internet
and basic cable with a free Roku 3 with no contract. I don't use cable or the
Roku.

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gnopgnip
You didn't shop around enough then. If you can get internet+cable+taxes for
less than the cost of internet only there is a better deal out there

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rconti
nope. $5/mo cheaper for double the internet speed and "free" cable TV. Comcast
is desperate to get their subscriber numbers up.

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scarface74
But with Comcast, I would also pay each month.

$50 - 5 extra set top boxes $10 - "HD Technology Fee" $5 - "Broadcast Access
Fee" $5 - "Regional Sports Fee"

That's $70/month in fees.

I pay:

$10 - Netflix - I would have this anyway.

$19 - Sling ($30 normally. I get a $5 discount through TMobile and a $5
discount for being on the Orange Beta)

$11.99 - Netflix no commercials

$6 - CBS all access

I also have Amazon Prime. I probably would have that anyway but I do have
Amazon Prime Video. Let's say it's worth $5.00 a month.

I pay less for all of the subscriptions services than I would just in fees for
Comcast. On top of that, they are a lot less of a hassle to cancel.

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tyingq
_" Cloud DVR Bundle - The live TV service will allow for a certain amount of
recording...But this recording space will not be a fully functional DVR, as it
will not support fast-forwarding"_

No thanks. Is there a competitor (PS Vue, Sling, others?) that lets you fast
forward past commercials?

Edit: Apparently the ability to FF is spotty, no matter who the "cloud TV
service" is. If they offer it at all, it works on some shows and not others,
and is also spotty for "on demand" content vs dvr content.

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xanderstrike
Honest answer: piracy. If companies won't let you pay to avoid advertising,
let them know it's a problem by not paying at all.

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mathgeek
"If I can't have it exactly the way that I want it, I'm going to acquire it
illegally."

An interesting and recurring theme in piracy, to be sure.

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Veratyr
Well it seems to be the only thing that drives improvement in media licensing.
Without piracy I suspect iTunes and Spotify would have come decades later, if
at all. I suspect the same can be said for Steam. Piracy really is an
availability problem.

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woogiewonka
Ads you say? No thanks.

~~~
brianwawok
And they block your ability to fast-forward.

Dumb. I know why they do it, but my life is too short to fastforward.

Want me as a customer? Then you need:

1) No ads. I will not tolerate ads in my house. I do not want your clown
burgers or your overpriced car. if that means I need to pay 10% more, then
charge me the 10% more.

2) Ala-Carte pricing. I do not watch sports. I am not going to pay $20 a month
for ESPN and a bunch of sports programs. I will totally pay a few bucks for
the history channel, or something that has value.

3) Needs to be fully streaming or TIVOed. i.e. let me watch at 6:23 pm or 7:19
pm. No sitting around until 8:00pm so I can watch a show.

Currently do Netflix + HBO and have more TV shows than I can watch. Totally
willing to throw in a few more bucks for something of value, but no $200 cable
package is going to happen here.

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lithos
If you're willing to pay 50% more for no ads, they wouldn't let you. Since
you're the target.

~~~
timcederman
But they do...with Hulu Plus already. ($8 vs $12)

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wnevets
Much like youtube live, there is no way it's worth the price.

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hbosch
> unlimited DVR with up to 200 hours of programming.

Is this not a contradiction? Sounds limited to me (not that I'd likely record
200+ hrs of TV).

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nommm-nommm
I think it means there's no limit to which programs you can record.

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revmoo
Hulu: "We've seen what the cable companies are doing and it seems to be going
poorly for them. So we're going to go ahead and give that a shot"

~~~
grangerg
Exactly. We canceled Hulu ages ago. Look! I can pay for Hulu, and get the
exact same service as people that get it for free---but on something other
than a browser!

Canceling "cable" was a bit jarring at first, but I don't miss it anymore. It
was kind of like trying to stop watching the show "24". The show had its hold
until I missed the subsequent episode, then it was gone; I didn't care
anymore.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Hulu silently removed free streaming and replaced it with Yahoo TV, I guess.

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/08/hulu-ending-free-
streami...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/08/hulu-ending-free-streaming/)

