We have been cable television free since Spring. We’ve been using Windows Media Center and a TV tuner card to record over-the-air shows such as The Office and 30 Rock. This has worked pretty well for us, aside from the occasional hiccup of signal from the antenna. However, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of the Hulu Plus channel on our Roku Player, so when it finally became available this week, I signed up for the service (at the reduced price of $7.99).
I want to like this service. I’ve read a lot of commenters that refuse to subscribe because they don’t want to pay for a subscription and see commercials. For me, this isn’t a very big deal – if I were paying for cable, I’d see commercials there too. There aren’t very many commercials on Hulu Plus and I still get through the show much faster than I would if I were watching it live. More importantly, the quality of the videos is great and the Hulu Plus interface on Roku is nice. The UI passes the wife test, as she was able to find everything easily and wasn’t confused by the menus. The only issue we had with the interface was that by including clips for the prior season in the videos section for shows, they make it seem like the entire series run is available when, in reality, only episodes from the current season are available for many shows. My wife has been wanting to try Modern Family and the inclusion of video clips for Season 1 makes it seem as though prior seasons are available.
This issue underlies the problem with the service, which is that there just isn’t that much content available on Hulu Plus. Sure, if we didn’t have Windows Media Center available to record these shows for us, we would need to look for a different solution and Hulu Plus might be a candidate. The fact is, though, that we don’t really need this service. If we didn’t have Windows Media Center, a TiVo box with an antenna might cost a bit more but would likely be a better solution.
Hulu Plus just needs more content. The service needs more shows and it needs shows from the cable channels that are available on regular Hulu. We were disappointed to find that Community wasn’t available, even though the other Thursday night NBC comedies are on Hulu Plus. Finally, the service needs to beef up its prior seasons – we haven’t watched Glee or Modern Family but I think we might give these shows a shot if we would watch prior shows on the service. The only thing holding Hulu Plus back from being a must-have subscription (like Netflix) is this content issue but, until more shows become available, our Hulu Plus subscription will likely be going the way of our cable subscription.
I agree with everything you have said. We were so excited about Hulu Plus, but I don’t get the “plus”. Hulu, the free service has many more shows that we want to watch – Fringe, Burn Notice, Human Target and more. We have Roku, and it seems a bit confusing between queue and subscription. It also seems like there are more commercials than on regular Hulu. Very disappointed.