Avoid Hulu Plus

As you probably know already, I'm not a fan of Hulu Plus. I thought I would share with you my reasons for this. Then you can make up your mind on their service.

Let's start with the difference between Hulu.com and Hulu Plus. They are both Hulu services. Hulu.com is their free video streaming service. Hulu Plus is a subscription based service that competes directly with Netflix and Amazon Instant Prime. In both Hulu services you watch ads to supplement the income to Hulu.

We'll start with this ad supported television model. Hulu is owned by Universal who also own NBC and other stations. They are running with a business model very similar to the cable companies. Customers pay Hulu to access their content. Then advertisers pay Hulu to show ads to their customers. Hulu is getting money from both ends of the service. To me it seems a lot like selling a mailing list. How do you feel when you subscribe to a magazine and then the publisher sells your mailing address to another company who uses that to fill your mailbox with direct mailing advertisements? Hulu is selling their viewership to advertisers to fill your TV and your time with direct advertisements. It doesn't feel fair and it isn't what Netflix or Amazon Instant Prime do. Those services offer commercial free television programs to their subscribers.

The other major reason I don't like Hulu Plus is the way the company has treated partners. When I first cut the cable around 2006, I was one of the first members of Hulu.com. The first thing I watched was Master and Commander. It was ad supported, which I didn't mind because Hulu.com is free to users. The ads help them gain the revenue they need to purchase rights to the content they were providing. It seemed like the same business model that local over the air television stations use.

At the time Hulu had the content and were getting the name recognition. They were struggling with the user interface, particularly making the bridge from the computer to the living room. This has been the ongoing struggle for mainstream adoption of Internet television. Along come a handful of programmers working on a Free and Open Source platform known as boxee. They were developing software that could run on Macs, Apple TVs, and Linux to help users build their own Home Theater PCs (HTPCs).

boxee had figured out the user experience and had one of the most popular HTPC media centers available. Hulu was gaining popularity and so some of the open source developers built a bridge between Hulu and boxee. Hulu was still getting to run their ads on their content and finally users were able to watch Hulu in the living room. It seemed like a partnership that could have real power over Netflix. Netflix had a large subscriber base with their DVD by Mail service and Netflix was building apps for every piece of hardware available, like game consoles and set top boxes. The boxee team even talked with the Hulu folks. Hulu told them that Hulu wasn't interested in building a lean back interface to their website. They were focusing on getting content. They were happy that boxee could add that functionality.

About six months after that arrangement things started to change. Hulu started blocking access to the boxee app. The boxee team updated their app and Hulu blocked it again. This continued a few more times. Then Hulu added a button on the website that would dim the background while you were watching a show. This was clearly intended to enhance the viewing experience away from the computer. About six months later Hulu announced Hulu Plus. They would continue to provide Hulu.com content for free. Now you could get a premium subscription to Hulu Plus which would increase the content available to subscribers. With the announcement of Hulu Plus access to Hulu.com was cut to only computers. Media centers like boxee and web browsers designed for a HTPC environment like Kylo were blocked from accessing Hulu.com. This included standard browsers like Safari if they were running on a mobile platform. Hulu decided overnight that long time members could not access Hulu content from a mobile device or HTPC unless they paid for a subscription to Hulu Plus and watched ads in the programming.

In my opinion this collapsed the Open Source home theater. It left the doors to Internet television wide open to companies like Netflix and Apple. boxee continued to develop their set top box, the Boxee Box. At twice the cost of the Apple TV, it really hasn't caught the attention of the mainstream public. It is a shame too because they had all of the great ideas in the area of set top boxes. They offer more content than anyone else and have one of the easiest user interfaces. Unfortunately their focus was drawn to the set top box environment and they've allowed their HTPC software to languish. It stopped keeping pace with changes to video websites, particularly the television network sites. This left many of them unwatchable from an HTPC.

Hulu.com has all but disappeared since you can only watch it on a computer and with all of the other choices, no one is doing that. Everyone is moving Internet television to the living room.

Hulu Plus will continue for many years, even though it is the worst option available. It will continue because Universal will pump huge amounts of money into advertising on traditional broadcast services. Everyone still watching cable TV and satellite TV will only know about Hulu Plus. No one else is advertising there. Netflix has some name recognition because they killed off Blockbuster and because they have an App on every device that connects to a television set: game consoles, DVD players, Blu-ray players, set top boxes, and smart TVs. The Boxee Box is priced too high for someone making the transition.

People new to Internet television have never watched TV without commercials. It is normal to them. It is also normal for them to pay for access to television. I dare say that a Hulu Plus subscription is far less per month than a cable subscription, and the user experience relative to commercials is the same. These people don't realize that they can have their cake and eat it too with services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Prime. These subscription services offer the TV shows in high definition without the commercials.

Universal and Hulu will bombard the cable and satellite system with advertisements about Hulu Plus to keep people from realizing that they can get commercial free, high quality TV programs and more for the same price. With that they will continue to draw people across to Internet television. I think that over time these people will realize they are getting less for their money and will eventually transition to other services. Universal will need to continue to draw in new subscribers because they will always be losing subscribers to the other subscription services.

If you do have a HTPC, make sure there is a standard browser on it. It is a bit more difficult to navigate from the couch. With a standard computer browser, you will still be able to watch Hulu.com content for free. It has the ads, but at least you're not paying for the privilege to watch Hulu ads.