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Apps New Hulu Autoplay

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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,886
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Alice, TX
In case anyone's searching for this, I called Hulu and asked how to turn off Autoplay on the updated Hulu app. The guy started laughing and said it's a bug and they're working on it. Good natured, said he's received a lot of calls, but it is annoying to fall asleep watching a TV series and wake up a few seasons over.

Either way, I tried searching around online and couldn't find anything so thought I'd post it. Personally I feel they either left it out on purpose or forgot to add it. Maybe it is a bug and they couldn't get it working right?

I also suggested they change the font or colors. I have a hard time reading them on a 32" from about 6' away.
 
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davidg4781 said:
In case anyone's searching for this, I called Hulu and asked how to turn off Autoplay on the updated Hulu app. The guy started laughing and said it's a bug and they're working on it. Good natured, said he's received a lot of calls, but it is annoying to fall asleep watching a TV series and wake up a few seasons over.

Either way, I tried searching around online and couldn't find anything so thought I'd post it. Personally I feel they either left it out on purpose or forgot to add it. Maybe it is a bug and they couldn't get it working right?

I also suggested they change the font or colors. I have a hard time reading them on a 32" from about 6' away.
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I called them about another issue. And asked about this. He said he had to set it himself on my account. He agreed it is no longer on the web ui. I did read somewhere in the help that it is in the client UI but I did not see it yet. Maybe by show but not sure.
 
Ugh! The old UI was a bit cluttered, but the new one... they went completely overboard in the other direction, trying to make the display as pretty and devoid of information as possible. And I really hate it.

The thumbnails are gone, so you have to read everything, they used a spindly font in ALL UPPERCASE (my theory is that upper and lowercase might have conveyed too much information) with white text on (often) light pastel backgrounds, making it simultaneously screen filling yet hard to read. The home screen went from dozens of thumbnails to 3 or 4 UPPERCASE titles at a time. If you're a blank slate and have no idea what you want to watch perhaps it's nice. If you know what things you want to watch, it's a mess to drill down into the menus to find anything.

Before, I could glance at the line of thumbnails for shows on my list that had new episodes and instantly see, "oh, three of them have new episodes" (by the little blue "New" in the corner). Now it's multiple swipes to get anywhere, and in the "Keep Watching" tab, for instance, you have to scroll down onto each show to get any more information about what's available/new besides the title.

Now, the home screen lists the names of 3 or 4 shows at a time, most of which I don't want to watch (and there's no way to say thumbs down - you can say "add it to my favorites" but not "never bother me with this show again"), and I have to switch away from this screen to other screens to get to anything I want to see. This seems like it's much more beneficial to Hulu than it is to me. Smh.

Thanks for the bit on the autoplay. That bugged the hell out of me the other night - after the program I wanted to watch finished, it just started autplaying some other show it thought I'd be interested in. NO! I want to be in charge of selecting what plays next on my TV. That doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Aha! For what it's worth, I was just able to go into the Hulu app on my iPad, and into the settings, and find a toggle for autoplay, which was switched on. I've turned that off. Let's see if that propagates to the Apple TV or is per-device.

Oh... nope, that didn't affect the Apple TV - it finished the show I was watching, and picked something at random (a show I've not heard of, much less selected) to autoplay.
 
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I wonder if they like auto play on so they can show how much people are "watching." Going through a season of Seinfeld while I sleep doesn't count as me watching.
 
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The new interface is beautiful. Gorgeous cover/background art. Makes Apple's UI look dated.
 
2010mini said:
The new interface is beautiful. Gorgeous cover/background art. Makes Apple's UI look dated.
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It looks nice but usability and discoverability is terrible. The text elements are too large and consequently require too much moving around to find anything.
 
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CarlJ said:
White text on light yellow or blue/green pastel backgrounds is beautiful. It is also nigh on unreadable.
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I have no issues reading it. Even from a distance..... maybe adjusting your contrast would help???
 
2010mini said:
I have no issues reading it. Even from a distance..... maybe adjusting your contrast would help???
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My TV's settings are fine for everything except the Hulu app. Why screw around with adjustments just for them? I can read the text, too, but not as quickly as if it were presented with decent contrast in the first place. Thin white text on a light pastel background is always a bad idea. Why go there? The backgrounds vary depending on what "wallpaper" image is being shown, but I have seen light blue/green and light yellow.

They also went to text only (removing the information that thumbnail pictures conveyed) and all uppercase text (removing the information that mixed upper/lowercase conveyed). And frequently showing just 3 or 4 titles per screen, rather than dozens of thumbnail images. Which is great, if the thing you wanted happens to be in that list, but if it isn't, it means a lot of scrolling to find what you want, with less context available to keep track of what you're scrolling through.

Their previous interface was too cluttered. This one goes to the other extreme - it's almost completely devoid of information. It would be an appropriate quantity and size of text (relative to screen size) if it were displaying on the Apple Watch, but it's displaying on a large screen television. Jacking up the font size is a poor counterbalance for throwing away all sorts of other visual cues.
 
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CarlJ said:
White text on light yellow or blue/green pastel backgrounds is beautiful. It is also nigh on unreadable.
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I agree. I was part of the beta where a lot of people made comments about it. This concern and other things that were not addressed. I understand it's good to have a beta to test things out but to ignore the comments of the testers seems strange. I read where the guy in charge was from Microsoft Zune Failed Project which seems to explain things. I also have DIRECTV Now and I much prefer the Live TV of DTV Now. Hulu feels they know what you want to see when you open the App instead of letting you decide. The My Stuff is my preferred of what they have. But it would be nice to have a Live TV option you can quickly and easily get too. Example: When I open DTV Now it goes back to the last channel I was watching and starts playing.
 
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The new UI is horrible. No way to turn off Autoplay! That's just dumb! How about I cancel my subscription till they fix it. Probably won't matter to them having one guy leave their service.
 
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Autoplay the bad UI dumb idea to put what you select with a line on the top hello it suppose to be under and the biggest insult that the audio is still in mono. Also leaving useless feedback on any service and beta testing is a waste of the time. The suits decide what they want and the feedback comments go into there trash like those suggestion boxes at restaurants. Ignored.

At least I have a usable Hulu UI on my Fire TV and Roku but soon just like how Netflix keep making there UI worse it use to be so great it will eventually have the new horrible UI then I might have to reconsider my subscription. Hulu content is great getting better than NF but if the UI is confusing and unusable what is the point then.
 
tonyr6 said:
Autoplay the bad UI dumb idea to put what you select with a line on the top hello it suppose to be under and the biggest insult that the audio is still in mono. Also leaving useless feedback on any service and beta testing is a waste of the time. The suits decide what they want and the feedback comments go into there trash like those suggestion boxes at restaurants. Ignored.

At least I have a usable Hulu UI on my Fire TV and Roku but soon just like how Netflix keep making there UI worse it use to be so great it will eventually have the new horrible UI then I might have to reconsider my subscription. Hulu content is great getting better than NF but if the UI is confusing and unusable what is the point then.
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What exactly is so confusing??? Pretty simple to me.
 
I could get used to the new UI. Like I said, the colorful choices seem odd though. Almost like someone there decided to troll everyone by making the whole app like rainbow brite or something lol.
 
My problem with the UI is that it takes to long to get to the location I want.

1. My Stuff should be the Home Page for me. Would be good for me to set that as my default.
2. Live TV should be easy to get to. Maybe part of My Stuff to maybe a Home default.

I also have Directv Now mainly for Live TV. When I click on it, it starts playing the last channel I was watching before. There could be an option that when you start Hulu and you have that option set it would start playing your previous Live TV Channel. Then from there you could go to "My Stuff" just be hitting the Menu Button.

For me the current Home Location is useless.
 
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I have a solution for this on Hulu and any. Other app that autoplays.

Use the timer on your phone or your iPad. Scroll down to the bottom of what plays when the timer is over and the last option is "stop playing." That option will stop anything that is currently playing on the iPad. I use it to limit my 9 hour nighttime playlist to 1 hour when i go to bed, but I tested it with the new Hulu app and it works there as well. So just start the timer, then go into the hulu app and start your show and it will stop whatever is playing when your timer ends.
 
Quiden said:
I have a solution for this on Hulu and any. Other app that autoplays.

Use the timer on your phone or your iPad. Scroll down to the bottom of what plays when the timer is over and the last option is "stop playing." That option will stop anything that is currently playing on the iPad. I use it to limit my 9 hour nighttime playlist to 1 hour when i go to bed, but I tested it with the new Hulu app and it works there as well. So just start the timer, then go into the hulu app and start your show and it will stop whatever is playing when your timer ends.
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Of course, by now Hulu has added an option to turn off Autoplay, but this original thread was about the Apple TV app, where the timer setting wouldn't apply.
 
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chrfr said:
Of course, by now Hulu has added an option to turn off Autoplay, but this original thread was about the Apple TV app, where the timer setting wouldn't apply.
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On my iPad, I downloaded the latest update and for some reason I still can't find the autoplay setting in settings. Anyway, this solution works for anything that would keep playing. I have been watching the Freeform app and that one doesn't have a way to turn off autoplay either, so the timer works there too. It also works on music like I mentioned. Generally a good thing to know.
 
Quiden said:
On my iPad, I downloaded the latest update and for some reason I still can't find the autoplay setting in settings.
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The toggle for Autoplay is under Account/Settings. It's the only option under settings for my account.
 
chrfr said:
The toggle for Autoplay is under Account/Settings. It's the only option under settings for my account.
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Great, thanks for pointing that out. I was looking under the gear icon when the video was playing. I didn't see that. That helps.
 
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