Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 54 posts

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#31

Post by Jemmeh »

erdevs wrote: post #16

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 t…

Most of the people I have asked who haven't cut the cord say they don't know how to set it all up or think it will be more complicated to use.

And/or they do not have internet at their house, only use the internet on their phone.

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#32

Post by the_watcher »

erdevs wrote: post #16

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 t…

Sports and broadband speed. Many cable companies have pricing setups that make paying for just high-speed internet nearly as expensive as a slower package + TV (and the TV channels aren't impacted by broadband speed issues). Now, this is generally only true in the first year of a contract (and then you're bumped to truly insane rates for TV services), but if you're willing to shop around and have multiple people who might be streaming at once, it's a better deal that way.

I say all of this as a cord cutter myself. It took a while to figure out, but I was able to cobble together essentially every channel or show through legal means using Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Playstation Vue, HBONow and an OTA antennae. The costs savings only really worked out once my roommates and I all realized that each of us were paying for our own Netflix and HBONow subscription, but even without that, it's nearly the same price as our previous cable package (intro rate), plus has the luxury of being able to cancel each individual service should we decide to make any kind of change without having to go through the hell of Comcast customer service.

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#33

Post by the_watcher »

toxican wrote: post #17
erdevs wrote: post #16

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 t…

Cheaper to bundle your internet with cable than to just have internet.

In intro rates, yes. Outside of that, absolutely not. Yes, you can shop around annually. Or you can pay about the same and have the ability to cancel and turn back on subscriptions you stop using or want to start again.

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#34

Post by the_watcher »

annieipr wrote: post #8

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

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)?

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#35

Post by dragonwriter »

the_watcher wrote: post #34
annieipr wrote: post #8

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

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)?

> 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.

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#36

Post by hsod »

SwellJoe wrote: post #29

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 be…

> 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).

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#37

Post by tracker1 »

chjohasbrouck wrote: post #7

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…

I remember when Hulu first started, loved it, loved the idea.. at the time there was only one ad per adslot on shows, so the ratio of ads to content was much better. The down side was If you watched a few shows, you'd see the same ad about half the time, which got tiresome.

All around I'm disappointed to see content getting pushed farther down, to where several shows are now 41-42 minutes of content for an hour program, where it used to be closer to 48. I don't mind paying for content so much, but would rather not have to go to half a dozen places to get it... HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon... what's next? I wouldn't mind paying the $50/month it costs combined if there was one place to watch everything ad-free.

I'm really surprised that Disney hadn't bought a stake in Netflix earlier on, as a lot of their family & children's content is very popular on the site.

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#38

Post by tracker1 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #29

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 be…

I always find Prime horrible for watching series, as they don't group the series together, at least not on the website. Agreed on Netflix's movie selection slipping. The problem is the battle between all the carriers. I'm not quite sure I get online rental pricing either... I mean, why can't they compete with Redbox here, where renting a movie for a 24hr viewing is $1? The streaming can't possibly cost more.

What's really needed is some consolidation. And I wouldn't mind seeing a service with a better ala cart model that's almost as much as buying DVD/BlueRay either.

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#39

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #29

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 be…

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

The one thing Hulu does better than Netflix and Prime is Anime. But CrunchyRoll has them beat there.

Re: Hulu is eliminating its free, ad-supported streaming service

#40

Post by tracker1 »

Jemmeh wrote: post #31
erdevs wrote: post #16

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 t…

Most of the people I have asked who haven't cut the cord say they don't know how to set it all up or think it will be more complicated to use. And/or they do not have internet at their house, only use the internet on their phone.

I think the *TV/Stick devices are pretty damned simple... I got my parent's a Roku a few years ago, and they still use it regularly (though they haven't cut the cord, mostly sports).
Post reply on HN