My opinion of Hulu Plus
Posted 9 May 2011 in hulu and xboxOne of my brothers was visiting recently and introduced me to a show called "Breaking In" on Hulu. After the first great episode, and knowing that he has a Hulu Plus account, I suggested that we watch the show on my Xbox 360.
I downloaded Hulu Plus, had him put in his account information, and then we sat back to watch the show. Except that it's web only. I checked "Archer": web only. "Futurama": web only. "Modern Family": latest season only. "Better Off Ted": not on Hulu. It turns out that every show I want to watch is restricted or unavailable, which is ridiculous. My computer isn't powerful enough to watch Flash-based videos, so streaming through my Xbox is my only option!
I searched Google for "hulu plus web only bullshit" today and the first hit was a Hulu blog entry which ends with the line "What will you be watching on Hulu Plus on Xbox LIVE this weekend?" Turns out the answer is "nothing".
So there you have it: this weekend Hulu had the opportunity to make me a subscriber. Instead, they demonstrated that a Hulu Plus account would gain me literally nothing. Their new Xbox support is a worthless 50MB download with no content and an aggravatingly laggy interface.
(On a side note: if you check the blog entry you'll also notice that of the 50+ comments, half are correctly complaining that there's no actual content, and the other half are spam. That Hulu doesn't tend its blog just convinces me further that the company can't be trusted with my business.)