Hulu Updates 'Hulu Plus' iOS App, Lowers Subscription Pricing

[talmy]

Advertisements are a necessity. Do any of you know how much it costs to produce broadcast content? I do I work in that industry. So many of you think its greed greed greed but its not. More things happen behind the scenes to secure rights to programing than you would think.

Advertisements are only a necessity if you are giving away the content. HBO and Showtime, for instance, do just fine producing original TV content that people pay to watch.

There is plenty of greed that goes into the cable bill. Greed of local stations that charge cable companies to deliver OTA content that consumers can receive for free with an antenna. Greed of satellite providers that only sell packages of channels that customers can't pick and choose which are forced on the basic tier. Greed of municipalities that charge the cable companies for running cables through your property. Greed of the cable companies that basically have had a monopolistic position.

 

[goplacia]

dropped direct tv, who is going to win

I have dropped Direct TV finally, (darn contracts) I think its interesting to see how this battle for television is going to play out on the internet. My feeling is Hulu won't make it. I have an apple tv, love it just for the sound improvement alone to my stereo from iTunes. I heart the digital audio.

Now that I have been trying all sorts of new products like Hulu, Netflix, you tube, actually network websites, ect... I think Apple should just do everyone a favor and make Safari work with Airtunes. To me that would not only make Safari a better browser it makes all the control stuff a moot point. Maybe I will get my wish with the ios release.

 

[k21975]

I will not pay to watch ads! WILL NOT.

So you don't have Cable or Satellite TV?

 

[ksgant]

Advertisements are only a necessity if you are giving away the content. HBO and Showtime, for instance, do just fine producing original TV content that people pay to watch.

There is plenty of greed that goes into the cable bill. Greed of local stations that charge cable companies to deliver OTA content that consumers can receive for free with an antenna. Greed of satellite providers that only sell packages of channels that customers can't pick and choose which are forced on the basic tier. Greed of municipalities that charge the cable companies for running cables through your property. Greed of the cable companies that basically have had a monopolistic position.

Interesting though...how much would you be willing to pay for HBO a-la-carte? For instance, if HBO allowed people to watch ALL their content via Apple-TV and Google-TV services and the Web and iOS and Android devices....how much would you pay for that per month? Perhaps eventually allowing HBO to keep making it's expensive TV shows and movies without having to be tied down to a cable service.

How much would something like that be worth to people? I have to believe that HBO also gets subsidized by the cable providers, because I can't believe they survive solely on the extra 10 dollars a month to get it on cable...or whatever it is.

 

[AkronElliott]

Would be interesting if the distribution of tv shows concept changes. That as a subscriber I can get the first 5 shows before they are aired on cable or "over the air" traditional way. That would be more of a purchase value to me.

Having to wait through baseball playoffs to see the next episode on FOX????

 

[koobcamuk]

Not sure if anyone else has spotted the jailbroken iPad?

 

[alent1234]

Advertisements are only a necessity if you are giving away the content. HBO and Showtime, for instance, do just fine producing original TV content that people pay to watch.

There is plenty of greed that goes into the cable bill. Greed of local stations that charge cable companies to deliver OTA content that consumers can receive for free with an antenna. Greed of satellite providers that only sell packages of channels that customers can't pick and choose which are forced on the basic tier. Greed of municipalities that charge the cable companies for running cables through your property. Greed of the cable companies that basically have had a monopolistic position.

HBO by itself it $15 a month on top of the cable bill. and it's owned by Time Warner which is also my cable company. most people here think $10 a month for Hulu is too much

 

[geerlingguy]

I pay $0 for cable/satellite.

Over the air has 16+ free channels in St. Louis where I'm at, with at least 6 of those channels broadcast in HD.

Like someone else said, when Hulu drops to $4.99, then I may take a look at it.

For now, I will stick with my $8.99 TOTAL entertainment/TV/movie plan.

Exactly the same situation here. Why the heck would you pay money for any live-broadcast content in this century...? Money is saved by those who are patient

Oh, and hi to another St. Louisan!

 

[jclardy]

Put it on Apple TV or Xbox 360 then I will consider it.

My problem with Hulu is that nearly all of their content is broadcast over the air in 720P HD already.

 

[Cougarcat]

Interesting though...how much would you be willing to pay for HBO a-la-carte? For instance, if HBO allowed people to watch ALL their content via Apple-TV and Google-TV services and the Web and iOS and Android devices....how much would you pay for that per month? Perhaps eventually allowing HBO to keep making it's expensive TV shows and movies without having to be tied down to a cable service.

How much would something like that be worth to people? I have to believe that HBO also gets subsidized by the cable providers, because I can't believe they survive solely on the extra 10 dollars a month to get it on cable...or whatever it is.

Since there is not always something on HBO I'm interested in, I'd prefer an iTunes-style approach to iTunes, with some modifications. $15-20 a season or miniseries, downloadable in 720p, same quality as the torrent sites. I'd have paid that for The Pacific, and I'd pay it for A Song of Ice and Fire when it comes out. I don't have cable, and I never will.

 

[goobot]

Apple should buy hulu no joke. Base for tv/movie streaming service.

 

[nrrhgreg]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I pay $0 for cable/satellite.

Over the air has 16+ free channels in St. Louis where I'm at, with at least 6 of those channels broadcast in HD.

Like someone else said, when Hulu drops to $4.99, then I may take a look at it.

For now, I will stick with my $8.99 TOTAL entertainment/TV/movie plan.

Exactly the same situation here. Why the heck would you pay money for any live-broadcast content in this century...? Money is saved by those who are patient

Oh, and hi to another St. Louisan!

Sports. Baseball specifically. And until MLB fixes its stance on blacking out local markets with their online plan I'll keep paying for UVerse and Fox Sports Southwest.

 

[ksgant]

Apple should buy hulu no joke. Base for tv/movie streaming service.

I have a feeling that the moment they do that, everyone will start pulling content off of Hulu. The cable companies and movie people are scared that Apple will become the 300-pound gorilla like it did with music.

 

[AkronElliott]

Since there is not always something on HBO I'm interested in, I'd prefer an iTunes-style approach to iTunes, with some modifications. $15-20 a season or miniseries, downloadable in 720p, same quality as the torrent sites. I'd have paid that for The Pacific, and I'd pay it for A Song of Ice and Fire when it comes out. I don't have cable, and I never will.

+ 0.5, This is close to something I would be interested in but I would not want to possess the content locally. It is costing me to house the content locally or have a online backup service to house it. Would rather have access to stream.
Had to purchase physical media, electric to spin the drive, and I do not always reference the saved media for months on end.

 

[joekun]

Next Hulu, Netflix or some other streaming content service needs to start providing local news and sports content. Without those everyone will continue to be locked in the grip of Comcast and the other cable/satellite providers.

Obviously it varies depending on your favorite sport, but I cut directv in March and have not missed a single game of college football that I wanted to watch! Between my OTA HD feed of ABC, and ESPN3.com I get everything, and I used to have to pay for ESPN Gameplan every year to get what I get now for nothing. I'm saving $75 a month (which was bare minimum with a DVR) and LOVING it!

No way I'm paying $7.99 for Hulu plus, I'd rather just hook my laptop up to my TV and stream current content from hulu for free. I will probably have a dedicated HTPC hooked up to my TV before long, that way content available on a computer will never be blocked from my TV.

There is one streaming site I do subscribe to that gives us current Korean programming, $40 a year with no commercials. You can also view their content for free if you want to watch ads. That's a model I can respect and am content to pay for.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Advertisements are only a necessity if you are giving away the content. HBO and Showtime, for instance, do just fine producing original TV content that people pay to watch.

There is plenty of greed that goes into the cable bill. Greed of local stations that charge cable companies to deliver OTA content that consumers can receive for free with an antenna. Greed of satellite providers that only sell packages of channels that customers can't pick and choose which are forced on the basic tier. Greed of municipalities that charge the cable companies for running cables through your property. Greed of the cable companies that basically have had a monopolistic position.

Re-Transmission fees of course have an associated cost. Where do you think the content comes from! HBO and Showtime also charge me an additional $20 dollars a month for programing.

 

[dXTC]

Exactly the same situation here. Why the heck would you pay money for any live-broadcast content in this century...? Money is saved by those who are patient

I see your point. However, this is often inconvenient, as some of these shows are scheduled at the same time on different stations, or are scheduled at inconvenient times.

Of course, there are workarounds, but I'm still not yet sure I want to invest in a digital OTA antenna + EyeTV combo to replace my satellite + DVR setup.

EDIT: Had to comment on this:

...
There is plenty of greed that goes into the cable bill. Greed of local stations that charge cable companies to deliver OTA content that consumers can receive for free with an antenna. Greed of satellite providers that only sell packages of channels that customers can't pick and choose which are forced on the basic tier.

QFT. This is the single biggest reason I'm wanting to replace my satellite service. My family actually watches (besides the locals) four cable-only channels, maybe five at the most. However, in order to get the ones we actually watch, we have to pay for scores more that we have absolutely no interest in.

Seriously... W. T. F.

 

[convergent]

I think $4.99 is the winning price here. Still, having inline ads for a service I am paying to use, is unattractive (unless this has changed).

IMHO, this is more proof that Hulu doesn't understand this market , but it's not like anyone has gotten it 100% correct either.

This argument keeps coming up and its just totally non-sensicle to me. How can someone be willing to pay $60-100 a month for cable TV, which has FAR more ads than Hulu Plus, and then complain that $8 a month is too much? Am I missing something here? The total ad time in Hulu is probably 1/4 as much as the same program via cable or OTA, and the cost you are paying for the content is at least 10x.

A combination of OTA, Hulu Plus, and Netflix makes a pretty inexpensive and compelling case to cut the cable cord.

 

[convergent]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)



Sports. Baseball specifically. And until MLB fixes its stance on blacking out local markets with their online plan I'll keep paying for UVerse and Fox Sports Southwest.

MLB.tv on Boxee is the best experience you will ever have for baseball in my opinion. Blackouts only last 90 minutes post game time, and often the games are on network TV. We switched from MLB Extra Innings to MLB.tv for about half the price and had a great season with it. I really wish that more content providers would follow MLB's lead and deliver apps on the major STB platforms (Boxee, AppleTV, GoogleTV, etc.) to package their content. If enough of them move this way, the need for cable will drop significantly.

 

[Surf Monkey]

Oh sweet!

Though I checked, but maybe I'm missing where it is on Netflix, but was looking for last night's Glee...my daughter really loves that program. Also, can't find the recent episodes of Modern Family and Cougar Town, nor last Saturday's SNL. That has to be on Netflix somewhere, right? I mean, since everyone is comparing Netflix and Hulu, they have to have the same content.

I mean, it couldn't be that each service has content the other doesn't have...that's just silly.

More cute sarcasm. Nice.

Look, the reason you get ads in Hulu right now is that it's the price you pay to watch shows from the current season. However, the issue extends beyond that because Hulu puts ads in older TV content as well. So, if you want to watch old episodes of the Dick VanDyke show on Hulu, you have to watch ads. Watch the same thing on Netflix... no ads.

So while you're correct that there are some areas where one or the other service has unique content, it's also true that as a rule Netflix does not embed ads in their TV content. It's also very likely that Netflix will eventually (probably sooner than later) get content agreements in place that allow them to stream more current shows. Whether these "fresh" episodes will have ads embedded in them or not is anyone's guess.

Apple should buy hulu no joke. Base for tv/movie streaming service.

You're thinking too small. Apple should cut to the chase and buy NBC Universal and Disney.

 

[dstankus]

How is this different than the $100/month cable subscriptions most people have?

Let's see, what's on cable/FIOS/satellite that's different from this Hulu;

--Lots of content in HD
--PPV, also in HD
--Local channels, including local news
--Lots of other channels; is Discovery, Bravo, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Speed, TBS, etc on Hulu? All of the shows?
--Sports

I agree that if all you want for TV is to watch 30 Rock, Modern Family and Glee on your computer screen then Hulu might work for you.

If on the other hand you want loads of different choices, HD, local channels including news and sports, and have a large HDTV and want the best 1080p picture, you're still looking at cable/FIOS/satellite with a DVR box as your best choice.

This won't last forever, someday you'll be able to buy channel subscriptions a la carte directly from the provider and stream via the internet to some sort of computer/set-top box hybrid. But today isn't that day.

 

[Surf Monkey]

This won't last forever, someday you'll be able to buy channel subscriptions a la carte directly from the provider and stream via the internet to some sort of computer/set-top box hybrid. But today isn't that day.

Not today, but probably in the next year or two. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Apple's road map for the ATV includes exactly what you just outlined above.

 

[rlmccormick]

You get access to more content than the normal Hulu.

I thought there was a story on here a while back that the content on Hulu Plus was not the same as that on the website. By that I don't mean there is more on the Plus side but potentially less or different content. It was in the same story that claimed that commercials would still have to be viewed even for Plus subscribers.

 

[talmy]

Re-Transmission fees of course have an associated cost. Where do you think the content comes from! HBO and Showtime also charge me an additional $20 dollars a month for programing.

The associated cost is borne by the cable company. The fee goes to the broadcast station. You pay it indirectly. So you are paying the broadcast station to view their programs via cable rather than via your antenna. Seems fishy to me!

Regarding Showtime and HBO, of course you pay for that. My comment was in response to "commercials are required". They are not if you pay for the content.

The irritating model is paying for content and then having to watch commercials, which you do with Hulu+ and basic cable (although the commercials can be skipped with basic cable plus a DVR), but don't for OTA broadcasts, premium cable (HBO), and Netflix.

 

[Surf Monkey]

I thought there was a story on here a while back that the content on Hulu Plus was not the same as that on the website. By that I don't mean there is more on the Plus side but potentially less or different content. It was in the same story that claimed that commercials would still have to be viewed even for Plus subscribers.

SIGNIFICANTLY LESS content on Hulu Plus than on free Hulu.