Hulu Launches Live and On-Demand HBO as $15 Per Month Add-On Option

[MacRumors]

Hulu today announced that subscribers will now be able to add HBO's programming into their Hulu subscription for $14.99 per month, as well as Cinemax for $9.99 per month (via TechCrunch). Hulu currently offers Showtime for $8.99 per month as an add-on package to the basic streaming service.

HBO will be available as an add-on package for both Hulu's new live TV service (beginning at $39.99 per month) as well as its on-demand streaming tiers ($7.99 per month for limited commercials, $11.99 per month for no commercials). HBO's East Coast and West Coast live feeds will be available, as well as every show and movie in the network's back catalog.

Those interested will be able to access HBO on Hulu's new app for Apple TV, iOS, Xbox One, and Android. Coming soon, additional HBO and Cinemax channels will be added, like HBO 2, HBO Family, HBO Latino, HBO Comedy, HBO Signature HD, HBO Zone, MoreMAX HD, ActionMAX HD, ThrillerMAX HD, MovieMAX HD, 5StarMAX HD and OuterMAX HD.

Article Link: Hulu Launches Live and On-Demand HBO as $15 Per Month Add-On Option

 

[LordQ]

Winter is Coming!

 

[TurboPGT!]

Sigh. Wake me up in a few years when these services come down to earth. They are just all way too expensive.

 

[MacFro_Bro]

What baffles me is that TechCrunch and others are completely ignoring the UI debacle that has been going on with Hulu for over two months. The backlash from customers has been like nothing that Hulu has every seen or experienced.

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

What baffles me is that TechCrunch and others are completely ignoring the UI debacle that has been going on with Hulu for over two months. The backlash from customers has been like nothing that Hulu has every seen or experienced.

Yeah I hate their UI. But they are stuck with it. Not like Hulu will change it anytime soon.

 

[69Mustang]

So a skinny package that can cost up to $70 per month?
A: Uh, Lana? Lana!? LANA!?!

L: WHAT?

A: Should we get this?

 

[ck2875]

Hulu today announced that subscribers will now be able to add HBO's programming into their Hulu subscription for $14.99 per month

So uhhh.... why not just subscribe to "HBO Now" for $14.99/month? It let's you stream premieres live, etc without needing Hulu as the middleman.

 

[parseckadet]

Why would you do this when it costs the same to get HBO Now?

 

[Juicy Box]

What baffles me is that TechCrunch and others are completely ignoring the UI debacle that has been going on with Hulu for over two months. The backlash from customers has been like nothing that Hulu has every seen or experienced.

Yeah I hate their UI. But they are stuck with it. Not like Hulu will change it anytime soon.

The new UI on Hulu is horrible. Hulu's UI on the ATVs have never been great, but it looks like they have adopted Netflix's UI on the ATV4. Visually looking nice, but not very fun to navigate or use.

One thing that I like that Hulu recently added was profiles. Using them on the ATV3 is very easy and quick, which curiously, Profiles on the ATV3 was updated a few months before the ATV4 app. Profiles on the ATV4's version of Hulu takes many clicks and swipes to switch, and with the goofy swiping of the Siri remote design, it is easy to accidentally swipe into something that you did not intend to go into (this is not just Hulu though).

Anyways, I was interested in getting HBO for a few months while GoT is on, but I might stick with the HBONow app.

 

[UL2RA]

Why would you do this when it costs the same to get HBO Now?

You wouldn't ... cuz it would be dumb.

 

[Juicy Box]

So uhhh.... why not just subscribe to "HBO Now" for $14.99/month? It let's you stream premieres live, etc without needing Hulu as the middleman.

Why would you do this when it costs the same to get HBO Now?

This is easy to answer, if the UI of Hulu was better than HBO Now, it would be more convenient to get all your content from one app. Similar to how the TV app is suppose to/should work. One app to rule them all.

Of course the ATV4 Hulu app's UI is crap, so you are right, most people may end up wanting to use two apps instead of just one.

 

[redscull]

Sigh. Wake me up in a few years when these services come down to earth. They are just all way too expensive.

DIRECTV NOW taught me that +HBO should cost +$5. That was my threshold price. $15/mo is just dumb. It only took me a month or two to exhaust everything I cared to watch in HBO. And their monthly content added is NOT worth $15. That's more than the cost of NetFlix, and NetFlix offers/adds more content than HBO.

 

[yanksfan114]

Anyone have a recommendation for which streaming service they like/dislike from experience? About to pull the plug on my Comcast $160/month bill.

 

[appleCakes]

More than anything this shows lack of Apple leadership in the media business; this type of convoluted bundling was supposed to be ditched and revolutionized by Apple long time ago. Time and time we are witnessing the poor performance of Apple's weakest link, Eddy Cue, who has lost ambition and needs to retire (don't get fooled by rate of growth of his department; he's just reaping the benefits of good hardware and software and increasing customer base).

There is a lot of wishful thinking about what Steve Jobs would have done if he were alive; I don't think he could have done more on the hardware and platform side, but I am sure he would have seen the rise of Netflix and Hulu and alike earlier than many of us and would have put Apple Internet business on top of all of them using his cash hoard. Heck Hulu could have been an Apple offering long ago.

 

[Dewey911]

Anyone have a recommendation for which streaming service they like/dislike from experience? About to pull the plug on my Comcast $160/month bill.

I have tried several of the streaming services. I personally like DirecTV Now. Though people will tell you there are problems with the service I believe they are slowly working out the bugs. It really works well for me. I found that I got more of the channels I enjoy for less money than the others. Each service offers different features. I would tell you to try them all if you have to. You really have nothing to lose as you are not in a contract with these companies so you can cancel anytime and move on to the next one. Good luck.

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

DIRECTV NOW taught me that +HBO should cost +$5. That was my threshold price. $15/mo is just dumb. It only took me a month or two to exhaust everything I cared to watch in HBO. And their monthly content added is NOT worth $15. That's more than the cost of NetFlix, and NetFlix offers/adds more content than HBO.

I mainly stick with Netflix etc. I get HBO only when Game of Thrones comes on. after that I cancel it.

 

[tonyr6]

Lets not forget that the ATV4 Hulu app is still in mono for me. After over six updates with no improvements or fixes except to be able to disable autoplay I just disconnected my POS ATV4 again. Not just that but other apps are broken too. They buffer and never recover yet on the Roku and 2nd Gen FTV they work fine.

 

[Gasu E.]

What baffles me is that TechCrunch and others are completely ignoring the UI debacle that has been going on with Hulu for over two months. The backlash from customers has been like nothing that Hulu has every seen or experienced.

I just signed up for Hulu. Worst UI I've ever seen. Completely non-intuitive and unlike any other. I had to spend some effort figuring out the "theory" just to navigate the top menu. Still can't figure out how to navigate the time bar to my satisfaction (no, I am willing to watch the ads-- once).

 

[Mtmspa]

DIRECTV NOW taught me that +HBO should cost +$5. That was my threshold price. $15/mo is just dumb. It only took me a month or two to exhaust everything I cared to watch in HBO. And their monthly content added is NOT worth $15. That's more than the cost of NetFlix, and NetFlix offers/adds more content than HBO.

I got it for free with DTVN. That is my price threshold.

 

[2010mini]

Sigh. Wake me up in a few years when these services come down to earth. They are just all way too expensive.

Hope you are immortal because you will be sleeping forever.

 

[VeryVito]

What baffles me is that TechCrunch and others are completely ignoring the UI debacle that has been going on with Hulu for over two months. The backlash from customers has been like nothing that Hulu has every seen or experienced.

I've been a huge fan of hulu for years now, but the recent UI has rendered it practically unusable. They could offer every show available on Earth right now, and it would all go unnoticed behind that worthless screen that shows the same five programs, regardless of what I like to watch. I assume it's a preamble to a coming content purge; otherwise, I have no idea why they'd want to limit one's view into the catalog so thoroughly.

 

[tom5304]

Add another vote for the awfulness of the new Hulu UI. It forced me to drop Hulu Plus completely. They gave me one free month, but that expired about a week ago, so no more Hulu for me.

Companies should be punished for being anti-consumer. I switched to an LG G6 when Apple dropped the iPhone headphone jack; I feel that strongly about anti-consumer nonsense. Hulu lost my $12 a month, so I switched and now I'm paying $10/month for Netflix. You lose some shows and you gain some shows, but at least I don't have to suffer that hideous Hulu UI.

And like others have mentioned, why is this Hulu UI disaster not a bigger story in the tech news world? They have to be losing A LOT of subscribers. It takes me a lot to ditch a $12/month service, because that's not a lot of money. Hulu had to be really bad to lose me, but they got it done.

If YouTube TV comes out with a premium-price ad-free experience, I'll jump at that. Until then, the whole scene is a bit of a mess.

 

[mattyj2001]

So uhhh.... why not just subscribe to "HBO Now" for $14.99/month? It let's you stream premieres live, etc without needing Hulu as the middleman.

Using Hulu instead would be good if you want to live stream something other than a premier, or catch Last Week Tonight early on the west coast by tuning into the east coast feed. Simplified billing/payment. One less app cluttering up your Apple TV screen. I'm assuming Hulu will allow recording to DVR and proper program subscriptions, two things HBO Now lacks on Apple TV. In the pantheon of streaming apps with terrible, non-intuitive UX's, Hulu > HBO Now, but just barely.
[doublepost=1499375731][/doublepost]

Anyone have a recommendation for which streaming service they like/dislike from experience? About to pull the plug on my Comcast $160/month bill.

Despite Hulu's terrible UI, it's the one I prefer. Have tried the Playstation Vue thing and Sling. Vue was pretty good but too expensive for something that lacked DVR features, and small/spotty back catalog.

Sling just didn't have enough channels I wanted to watch and lacked a couple major networks when I was looking at it last year. Also at the time, no DVR capability.

Hulu's content is the most versatile and complete in my opinion, the Live part has a DVR that works well and you can mix it with your regular Hulu subscription and skip commercials on archived content. That's so worth the extra few bucks that costs.

But the interface. Yecch. It lacks a proper channel/time grid so browsing live TV is an exercise in frustration. It's like they designed it expressly to anger users. When you watch something from five years ago, suddenly everything from that time until now is in your 'up next' queue and as far as I can tell there's no way for old guys like me to just watch what they want and not have these newfangled 'catered' lists, which judge my tastes terrible all the time.

In any case, content is King and Hulu+HBO+Netflix has everything I want to watch.

Pretty much all services have a month free trial. If you watch a lot of TV, I'd suggest getting trials on all of them at once and try them out with the same shows, etc., day-to-day to see which one you can tolerate the UI of the best. Ha ha.

 

[CarlJ]

The new UI on Hulu is horrible. Hulu's UI on the ATVs have never been great, but it looks like they have adopted Netflix's UI on the ATV4. Visually looking nice, but not very fun to navigate or use.

This. It went from cluttered-but-useful to sacrifice-everything-for-pretty. With a propensity for things like showing thin-stroked white uppercase text on yellow backgrounds. Which is nice unless, you know, you want to actually read the text, much less parse it quickly. And screens mostly devoid of information (lest it obscure the pretty background picture), so you can see maybe 3 or 4 titles (programs or episodes) at a time - it's like using an interface with blinders on (imagine if you were limited in the Finder on the Mac to windows that only showed a 2x2 grid of icons, and you had to endlessly scroll to find things).

 

[Michael Scrip]

Anyone have a recommendation for which streaming service they like/dislike from experience?

About to pull the plug on my Comcast $160/month bill.

Curious here...

What exactly are you getting for your $160 a month on Comcast? I'm guessing internet and some TV packages? Maybe a home phone included in the bundle?

And what does it cost to get just internet from Comcast?

And then how many of these additional services will you be subscribing to?

Once you get Netflix and/or Hulu... then maybe a premium service like HBO... and then a DirecTV Now, SlingTV, or YoutubeTV for regular TV shows...

I'm wondering what the total monthly expenditure will be.

Everyone likes to talk about "cutting the cord" and whatnot... but I never hear any real numbers.