Hulu… Plus Ads?

I love me some Hulu. Certainly a good amount of content available and the interface is great. It doesn’t have everything I had with a full cable, but for $7.99 for the “Plus” version versus an absurd bill from Comcast, I’ll take it. The only issue I have, and it’s a big one, is I cannot escape the ads. Ads, ads, ads, Ahhhhhhh! I cut the cord, and still ended up with ads.  According to the Hulu website, they have decided to keep ads on the subscription “Plus” version to because “We have found that by including a modest ad load, we can keep the price of Hulu Plus under eight bucks, while still providing users with access to the most popular current season shows on the devices of their choice”. 

What would I pay to avoid Hulu pushing ads at me? Certainly another few bucks a month. $14.99 perhaps? After ridding myself of over $100 a month in cable bills, I think I could accept another $5 to $8 a month for and ad fee version of Hulu. It frustrates me is that there is no option for that. How about Hulu free, Hulu Plus with ads, and Hulu super duper fantabulous without ads? I don’t know about the technology needed to do this, but we do know that they have the ability to offer additional services and “premium content” based on subscription fees and logins.

With cable TV now a thing in the past for me and many other cable cutters, it just becomes a matter of what services are you willing to buy. With a variety of methods to receive TV shows over the internet, Hulu is certainly one of the most well known and widest used options. I use a PlayOn server and a Roku Box for streaming shows, and a WD Live Hub for playing local media, but Hulu is a big part of the equation.

If you want to use Hulu on your computer, you can use the free version. It streams in standard definition and carries the 5 most recent episodes of a series. The free version will not work with set top boxes (Roku, Apple TV, WD Live, Blu-Ray players etc), but you could easily output from your computer to your TV via an HDMI card or various other options. With Hulu Plus, you can stream to set top boxes, which I wanted, and has programming in HD (720p). The Plus version also has full seasons and even back seasons of shows. But then there is that one overriding factor that they both have… ads. Ads, ads, ads, I can’t escape them. I cut the cable cord, get to watch what I want when I want it, but I can’t get past the ads. And no, fast forward doesn’t work during the advertisements, you will be watching them.

Back in my cable days, I had a DVR from Comcast. Sure I was paying a small fortune for the service, but I never watched anything but sports live. I set the DVR to record all the shows I watched, and then when I played them I could fast forward through the ads. It worked perfectly. I feel like now I have taken two steps forward and one step back. Life was ad free, and I was pretty happy about it. I had plenty of other complaints about cable causing me to rid myself of the beast, but I was ad-liberated from the interruptions of commercials.

My vision of the future has been somewhat compromised now. I saw ads and interruptions to shows I was watching as a thing of the past. Let some other sucker lose eight out of every thirty minutes of TV sitting through fast food jingles, people with big smiles pimping E.D. pills, and a lizard trying to get my to buy insurance. Not me, I was freewheeling, speeding past the ads, watching half hour shows in twenty to twenty one minutes.  Now here I am, watching shows on demand, but waiting through a few ads per episode. A big step in the wrong direction as far as I am concerned. That being said, this is a selfish view of what I want and envision as my TV viewing of the future. I am sure the good folks at the networks who are producing the shows I watch would disagree with my point of view. 

	Hulu	Hulu Plus
Cost	Free	$7.99 a Month
Advertisements	x	x
Play on a computer	x	x
Play on a TV connected Device		x
Shows in HD (720p)		x
Full Seasons and Full Series Runs		x

On an odd note that I will probably take some flak for, the ad segments are almost too short. What? Too short? How can I say that? Well the ad breaks are pretty short, 40 seconds isn’t long enough to run to the bathroom, and barely enough time to get to the kitchen and grab something out of the fridge. You can keep the show running (ad) and try to make it back in time, or pause it, get your beer, and then come back and watch the commercial. I know, it is hard to believe it but I am actually complaining that the ad blocks are too short, but now they are not useful in any way. At least back in the pre DVR days, you could effectively use your ad time for a quick “bio-break”.

So has this made me cancel my Hulu subscription? Nah, I like the product, I like the price, and as a supplement to my other viewing options it is still a pretty good deal. I have plenty of local content and streams from many Roku channels and Playon scripts and plugins are ad free. I just ask of Hulu to give us an option. Let me buy a subscription level that has no commercials. I don’t pretend to speak for the other Hulu users, or know if anyone but me would be willing to pay the extra dollars to get a new level of service. In fact, I don’t even have any idea what the cost model would look like for Hulu to even be able to afford to do it. But I do know that the future of TV is here now in various formats, and I am tired of having junk I don’t want pushed onto my screen. I am already paying for the subscription now; give me the option for an upgrade to ad free Hulu and there is a good chance they would get my cash.

Resources

Hulu Web Site