Pause/rewind/FFW of live tv all require local storage. Streaming devices are limited in this area.
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'Hulu With Live TV' Appears on App Store, Includes FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, and More [Update: $39.99+]
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Pause/rewind/FFW of live tv all require local storage. Streaming devices are limited in this area.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Anybody who likes sports... or local live news... or being able to talk about first-run television shows as or immediately after they run instead of a day or week later.
well the atv has plenty of local storage. channels app buffers the live channel for 30 minutes.
So, there is:
- standard Hulu: $8
- adfree Hulu: $12
- live TV + standard Hulu: $40
- live TV + adfree Hulu: $44
- live TV + standard Hulu + 200 h DVR (with skippable ads): $60
- live TV + adfree Hulu + 200 h DVR (no ads): $64
Is that correct?
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Once again-- Washington D.C. residents get boned with no live ABC or CBS 
They should lower the cost for residents who live in these areas. Why are we forced to pay more for less content than somebody living in NY?
They should lower the cost for residents who live in these areas. Why are we forced to pay more for less content than somebody living in NY?
Exactly what I did. I also put in a $100 attic antenna for OTA broadcasts I might miss. That resulted in another 100 channels - admittedly about half are useless. I plugged in a HDHomeRun into my router and can stream OTA broadcasts to my ATV. Haven't really missed the overpriced UVerse TV plus the extras that cost like HD, TV boxes, etc. I'm saving over $100 a month. Luckily I have gigabit so we stream to multiple devices like crazy with no hiccups.
Also doesn't hurt that they threw in HBO free for a year.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Probably no Dolby Digital 5.1 as that would differentiate it from ALL of the others and thus be a key marketing point.
It appears "the future" is about settling for mono or stereo sound... lower-end HD resolution... having to jump app-to-app or box-to-box or service-to-service to be able to see less than all of what we want to see and "used" to be able to see when we had cable/satt. We also need to provide tech training for the family so they can learn how to jump app-to-box-to-service to find what they want to watch too. Virtual DVR quality & functionality tends to be substantially lower than physical DVR quality & functionality. Integration of everything available to "us" in a single on-screen guide seems increasingly pie-in-the-sky. General reliability seems lower. Always a desirable missing channel or three+. And we burn bandwidth toward hard caps on our broadband provider and probably pay up more for that broadband unbundled from the package we used to have.
But hey, when we add it all up we can brag about saving $10 or $20 or $30 (or so) per month, which comes in handy to put toward our $1000 cell phones and $2500 laptops. And we're really sticking it to the cable company who's probably charging us more now (or soon) for broadband on which the entire "the future" depends. If most of us embrace this "the future," the cable company will eventually just make up for the cable subscription losses with higher broadband prices/tiers so the net effect is that we will all pay more for less.
I wonder how long it will be now before the bulk of us are remembering "the good old days" when for the same money we now pay for a hodge podge of services running on a variety of STBs with or without gimped & select DVR functions, we could get bundled broadband + cable with 300, 400 or more channels, many with 5.1 sound and higher-quality HD picture, a real DVR, live sports, local news, all in one unified on-screen-guide and none of those video streams counted against our broadband cap? Ahhhh, the good old days.
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Yeah, because antennas are things modern people in 2017 use. Not.
It's a matter of convenience, and whether or not it passes the non-technical wife test. I'd be run out of the house if I had to give her a list of instructions on where to get the various channels I/we watch.
We've been happy Hulu subscribers for a couple years and I'll be signing up for this immediately and ditching the $70 DirecTV Now 'deal'.
It does support pause, fast forward and rewind of live TV:
https://help.hulu.com/s/article/ka0...d-in-hulu-live-tv-subscription?language=en_US
And no, this does not require local storage (it'll also work on devices with little storage such as the Roku). It's all done in the cloud (they store the live stream in a file and move the playback position for the individual customer's stream).
Eh, Hulu (the current version, not this new thing) means I can get on-demand access to what the TV industry has to offer for $12 a month, instead of like six times that, which I had been paying for cable (before i cut the cord), or using an antenna where I was only getting half the channels/networks reliably. I'm happy to pay them that to have that amount of access to legacy TV. Most of what I watch is on Netflix and YouTube. $12/mo I can justify for legacy TV access. $40/mo I can't (don't need live access, don't want sports).
I cut the cord a year ago, expecting I'd pick up Apple's "skinny bundle" when it arrived. Now I'm not convinced I'd need even that.
Oh, wait...
I just looked at Hulu on Apple TV - they've updated the app (this is not downloading some new Hulu Live app, this is an automatic update to the existing app I've been using for the last year), made me log in again, took me through an "onboarding process" (including asking if I "wanted to import my watchlist from the previous app" - are you nuts, Hulu? In what scenario would throwing away my previous watchlist help?), and now... congratulations, Hulu! The new main screen one-ups the traditional "10 foot interface" by providing a "50 foot interface" (which will be useful if I ever move to a football stadium and watch Hulu on the Jumbotron - or if they port Hulu to the Apple Watch), and now presents about 80% less information on the opening screen, listing IN VERY BIG-BUT-THIN UPPERCASE LETTERS the names (no pictures) of four-and-a-half shows that I'm not interested in. And they seem to have special love for very thin uppercase lettering in all white on light colored backgrounds. With text-only in many situations. Not a good update, Hulu. Smh.
The two pics below exhibit red striping and banding that isn't there in real life (an artifact of taking pictures of a TV screen), but the (paltry) amount of information conveyed, and the terrible (lack of) contrast in the second picture pretty accurately capture the new interface. Sigh. The old interface was a little quirky and busy. They went way WAY too far the other direction, making these "pretty", but hard to read and almost entirely devoid of useful information. If this is the interface they're going to present to prospective customers of their new more expensive service, I don't think it's going to do as well as it could have.
Sure. Apple introduced the App store and claimed it was intended to "break even". I think it has since exceeded that due to huge volumes and maintenance costing less over time than its initial creation.
I don't think having a cheap TV service to sell Apple TV hardware would be a crazy idea even considering Apple's history. Apple changed their price for MacOS X upgrades to $0 for example. They *could* charge even $10 for upgrades and people would still buy them. They choose to make them free to promote upgrades and entice money spent in other areas.
The only appeal of live tv for most people is either sports or news. If you don't care about either one, then that is fine. To each their own. Not everything is for everyone.
I changed over to Playstation Vue to still have access to sports, otherwise I could watch everything the next day through the old version of Hulu.
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Unfortunately there is a lot more money at stake with tv compared to what happened in the music industry, things aren't going to just change overnight. The two industries are structured very differently too.
The other side is there are a lot of people who don't want to deal with apps that while not complicated, are more complicated. Not the regular macrumors user, but for example I wouldn't want to deal with a call from my mom everytime she was confused on something with a new not cable based tv system.
I might sign up for this. I already pay $35/mo for DirecTV Now and $12/mo for Hulu without ads. Seems like this would save me $7/mo and add CBS content, a DVR, and removes some channels I don't much care for. The main problem is I live in an area that doesn't get live streaming of the major networks, so no sports for me.
Disclaimer: I don't get OTA at my house, yes even with an expensive, high powered digital antenna, even though I don't live in the boonies, so don't suggest that. And cable is way too expensive.
Disclaimer: I don't get OTA at my house, yes even with an expensive, high powered digital antenna, even though I don't live in the boonies, so don't suggest that. And cable is way too expensive.
Very happy to see that the commercial-free version is only a few dollars more per month. We just upgraded our regular Hulu account to be ad-free and it's a night and day difference being able to watch an "hour long" TV show in about 42 minutes without watching a bunch of garbage. Well worth the extra few dollars.
Another useless service!
Everyone wants a share of ever shrinking cable/satellite dinosaur networks' revenue yet all we see so far is the exact same structure with minor tweaks and instead of receiving the broadcast over the satellite or cable, subscribers now stream through their networks.
Unfortunately none of the services – older or the most recent – have been able to shake this ugly business model.
Everyone wants a share of ever shrinking cable/satellite dinosaur networks' revenue yet all we see so far is the exact same structure with minor tweaks and instead of receiving the broadcast over the satellite or cable, subscribers now stream through their networks.
Unfortunately none of the services – older or the most recent – have been able to shake this ugly business model.
Live TV has the same appeal as live radio (FM), Pandora, etc.
Not everyone wants to have to choose what to watch and select a TV show and episode when they are in the mood to casually watch TV. Sometimes it's nice just to have the TV on in the evening and pick some halfway decent programming from a handful of your favorite channels. I don't want to always have to figure out what I'm in the mood to watch and then figure out which episode I want to watch, etc.
For this same reason, people like FM radio and services like Pandora. Yes, on-demand music services like Apple Music and Spotify are great too, but I don't always want to listen to the same playlist or figure out what I want to listen to - sometimes it's nice just to "listen". Live TV is no different. It's a different model than on-demand programming, but they compliment each other. Neither model is a replacement for the other for many people.
And why would i want to watch live tv with commercial breaks every 5 minutes if i can just watch the shows i like on demand? This seems somehow backwards lol
Thats like paying for radio only to wait for a song to play when you could just stream the song right away on spotify lol
Thats like paying for radio only to wait for a song to play when you could just stream the song right away on spotify lol