
Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service - kilink
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/8/12401884/hulu-cancels-free-streaming-move-to-yahoo-view
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chjohasbrouck
A couple years ago I was watching Hulu and noticed the ads always felt like
they took much longer to play than they should.

I got out my iPhone and timed the seconds as they counted down during ad time
on Hulu. Each second of ad time on Hulu took 1.34 seconds of actual time to
pass. They were telling you for example, that there were 2 minutes of ads
about to play, but the 120 second countdown would actually take 160 seconds to
pass.

I stopped watching Hulu altogether after that discovery. I think I checked
back in more recently and they had stopped doing that, but it's still a little
telling about where their head is at regarding ads and their customers.

~~~
CaptSpify
Youtube uses some magical time calculation as well. When I watch on my roku it
says "you can skip this ad in 5 sec", it usually takes ~7-10 for it to pop-up.

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CaptSpify
I just timed this, and yes, it took 10 seconds for the 5-second skip to pop-up

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SwellJoe
Hulu has always seemed like its primary goal is to serve the incumbent
television providers, and not their viewers. I don't know if it's still this
way, but when the paid version was first introduced, I tried it for a while,
but they often only had the most recent season of a show. What am I supposed
to do with that? Start watching a show at season 5?

Netflix gets it: I want to either watch the whole show from the beginning (not
necessarily in a binge, but sometimes), or watch the first episode and stop.
There is _never_ a time where I think "Oh, let's watch episode 9 from season 3
from this show I've never watched before".

I have Netflix and Amazon Prime; is there a reason to add Hulu to the mix, at
this point? Are there shows or movies on Hulu that I'm not getting from
Netflix or Prime? I am becoming more and more disappointed in the selection at
Netflix, even while their exclusive content has gotten better their movie
selection has begun to _suck_. I'd really like it if there were a good movie
service, like Netflix once was. Hulu obviously isn't that, of course.

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hsod
> I have Netflix and Amazon Prime; is there a reason to add Hulu to the mix,
> at this point?

If you want to watch currently airing shows on your own schedule, instead of
when they actually air. If you only like to watch back catalogs, maybe it
isn't for you. But you can't watch the very latest episodes of in-season shows
on Netflix or Prime (for the most part).

Hulu is mostly a replacement for DVR/cable On Demand, not DVD box sets
(although they do have a decent number of full runs these days).

~~~
SwellJoe
I don't own a TV and have never had cable. I have no idea what's currently on
television. I don't really care to watch shows as they happen, in the general
case; I'm fine watching them at the end of the season (or all at once from the
beginning, the way Netflix does their shows). There are very few shows I'd be
extra excited to get as they air (Game of Thrones is the only one that comes
to mind, and I would pay to watch it in a reasonable way online, but HBO
doesn't provide a reasonable way to do so).

Netflix has historically been my favorite of the available options; but their
selection, particularly movies but also shows, has gotten pretty weak in
recent years, so I always vaguely consider alternatives. But, mostly I just
end up renting via Amazon Instant Video when it's something that Netflix and
Prime don't have.

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allsystemsgo
Cool, now if they could not show ads for their paid service, that'd be great.

~~~
mark_l_watson
We pay $12/month so Hulu diesn't show us ads. Really worth the extra money.

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hackerboos
There are still ads on some shows even if you pay $12.

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hsod
In case anyone was wondering, from
[https://help.hulu.com/articles/52427902#list](https://help.hulu.com/articles/52427902#list)

"In response to feedback from our viewers, we started offering a commercial
free experience on Hulu. For a small number of shows, however, we have not
obtained the rights to stream commercial free and they are not included in our
No Commercials plan. You can still easily access these shows with a short
commercial before and after each episode with no interruptions during the
episode. Specific shows that still have commercials accessible through the No
Commercials plan will be noted throughout the signup, switching and playback
experience. While the list of shows may change, they are currently: Grey’s
Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Scandal, Grimm,
New Girl, and How To Get Away With Murder."

It's seven shows, and even on those the ads are only at the beginning and end
they don't interrupt the show. I say we cut them some slack.

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wonks
_cringes_ Well, I admit there are only a few things they don't have the full
rights to, and they're shows I don't watch, but I still find this grating.
They said "ad-free" and I pay for that. Not "almost ad-free".

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qbrass
So they pull the content that they'd have to show ads on, and now you're
complaining that the paid tier has less content than the free tier does.

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erdevs
Between Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO Go, Showtime, etc on-demand services...
what is left keeping people from cutting the cable TV cord? Just awareness and
inertia? (Which are powerful, witness AOL dial-up ISP for a decade+.) Or are
there other things keeping people tethered still? Sports? Reality TV series
which don't all make it onto these on-demand services?

Think this a smart move on Hulu's part. And depending on the economics,
potentially smart for Yahoo+Verizon too.

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greggyb
In the US, you cannot get Olympic coverage without a cable subscription. The
streaming from NBC demands authentication with the credentials from your cable
subscription. I don't have one. I can't even try to use my internet service
credentials, because my current apartment includes 50/50 fiber for free (the
most first world problem. Maybe even a .5 world problem).

I signed up for Sling[0] for a free trial to watch the games. The annoying
part is that the event I truly care about (Judo) is minimally covered on
network television and at awkward hours.

[0][http://www.sling.com](http://www.sling.com)

~~~
mikestew
_In the US, you cannot get Olympic coverage without a cable subscription._

Not _entirely_ true if one doesn't mind a little grey area by SSH tunneling to
your London, UK Linode and watching it on BBC. There was a good step-by-step
post at [http://bearsfightingbears.com/how-to-watch-the-olympics-
live...](http://bearsfightingbears.com/how-to-watch-the-olympics-live-from-
the-united-states), but it doesn't work for me anymore. It's what I did in
2012. Now I just don't care enough to bother. :-)

~~~
greggyb
Yes, my "In the US" means for a network endpoint in the US. There are always
ways to exert control over where the apparent endpoint of your connection is.

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qwertyuiop924
I remember when Hulu first launched. Hulu was the future.

I than remember my IP being blocked by Hulu because I was running a Tor node.
Before you say that sounds reasonable, it wasn't an exit node. And Tor
provides methods to tell the diference.

I was forced to take the node down, because my brother wanted Hulu, and we
live together.

Goodbye Hulu. Goodbye and good riddance. I know you think your customers will
join your paid service. They won't. Most of your users are bound for either
the richer streaming services, or PopcornTime and similar.

Way to make yourself less relevant.

~~~
imglorp
Considering Hulu is owned by ABC, Fox, and Comcast, any optimism of a
delighted customer would have been misplaced. They were basically competing
against their own model and had every reason to make you miserable.

They refused to validate the netflix model.

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qwertyuiop924
Speaking as a member of an area Comcast serves, they are the devil. They're
actually worse than other ISPs. Somehow.

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thomasruns
Hulu was amazing when it launched, but it's gone downhill ever since. The last
couple of times I've tried it, they show more commercials than I'd see just
watching the show live or on-demand. Plus it was a 1:1 relationship so if a
show had 10 commercials, it was the same one repeated 10 times.

Even if it was a free service, I can't justify using it over literally any
other streaming option out there, including on-demand where you can't fast
forward through commercials.

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kevin_b_er
So you can PAY to see ads just like cable TV.

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eikenberry
Or like most any magazine.

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annieipr
Don't know why they still force you to watch commercials for anything that is
on FOX even when you pay the upgrade.

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the_watcher
Only if you are on the $7.99 plan. To me, if you're willing to pay $7.99 for
Hulu, why wouldn't you pay $4 more to avoid ads (unless you really like ads, I
guess)?

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dragonwriter
> To me, if you're willing to pay $7.99 for Hulu, why wouldn't you pay $4 more
> to avoid ads (unless you really like ads, I guess)?

One can not like ads, but have the expected total disutility experienced in
Hulu-based ads on the $7.99 plan that would be avoided on the $11.99 be worth
less than $4/month, in which case the rational choice would be to not upgrade
to the ad-free tier.

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profeta
> main product appeal: choose what to watch.

> free, ad-supported version: you can't choose what to watch.

I may be wrong here, but why even call them by the same name?

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pacomerh
Thats fine. The only option that makes sense to me is the highest plan. It's
all or nothing

