Hulu Plus $10-per-month service now available for iPhone, iPad - Page 2

For all you cheap crying little chickens, I just downloaded the Hulu Plus app on my phone and they still offer a lot of shows for free! You don't have to pay the $9.99, that is just to access additional and HD programming. So, you can still be cheap and use Hulu Plus on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad for free and watch full shows. I just watched a few minutes of 30 Rock and it was clear and played well. And don't get me wrong, I like free also, but it seems people are quick to dismiss and cry about something without even trying it or doing proper research, to me $9.99 is reasonable for unlimited HD access.

The content providers (who started Hulu as an experiment) are being pressured by the other media (cable/satellite) from whom they earn several dollars per subscriber per month, to limit the free access.

So in addition to advertising paying for the website upkeep, they need to charge for the sake of charging, else they lose billions from Comcast and the like. Not making excuses for them, but search for an article on affiliate fees. That should explain the future of online video to you.

When did you get your invite to subscribe? I downloaded the app and gave them my email address and they said they will let me know. What is this invite all about anyway?

I don't access to the $9.99 area, but the app let me play the free programming. I did the invite also and my email says they'll let me know, too. I was only talking about the free area of the app, making it clear you don't have to pay to use the app for general viewing. The invite is for the upcoming additional programming and HD options - that is my understanding, those areas are not live yet.

There's also a $4.99 per month plan. The $13.99 plan allows 2 DVDs out at a time. The ones in the $14-20 range offer more than 2 DVDs at a time.

So you have evidence that most people are choosing the higher plans? Where is it?

Everyone I know has the $8.99 plan.

Thanks, Its all making sense now. I might try it out for a month if you can do it on a monthly basis.

Ad supported AND $9.99 a month? Uh, no thanks. I don't love TV that much. I have enough monthly bills.

No go.

Awesome. That's popular here I noticed, "you have evidence (proof)?" as if people are not entitled to their own thoughts and guesses. Maybe I should have said, "I think most...," in any event, everyone I know who has Netflix has a 2 or more at a time DVD plan. We can have a battle of friends & family with DVD subscription plans.

Maybe this will satisfy your request:
http://feedfliks.com/popular-netflix-plans

Don't know their sample size, but even if only a few hundred one can extrapolate their numbers to a broader group and make assumptions from there (similar to Nielsen's I guess).

I see all these people here bitching and complaing about the whole pay + ads idea.. and if its not for you, then its not for you... but I don't see what the big problem here is.

With the exception of a few choice shows and live events, HULU has a large amount of the stuff a lot people like/want to see. Now most (see I said, "most") people who have conventional TV services in their homes pay anywhere form 70 to 100+ dollars a month, before HBO and other premium channels. You PAY for that. AND you still have commercials... 3-5 per break, sometimes a minute long. Oh, and theres DVR (which for me when I used to have cable was an extra 8 bucks a month). Nice, except you have to deal with having a limited hard drive space so you can't hold everything you want. And most people - not us techies and appleinsider readers of course - don't know how to easily get that content from their DVR box to their phones or iPads or other portable devices. Sure you can ffwd thru ads with a DVR, but in the time you spend fast forwarding, then concentrating on not going to far and having to back up to where the commercial break ends and the show resumes, you usually spend about 30 seconds on this. Thats all the time it takes for the 1 hulu ad. no concentration or remote searching necessary.

Ok so HULU has commercials, but only 1 per break, and again usually only :30 seconds long. Barely long enough to get up and go do something during the break. They are asking 10 bucks a month for this new feature, available in High Def, anywhere you are, at any time, on your phone or iPad or iPod, with no having to measure how much of your hard drive your DVR is taking up, or having your pesky roommate/kid/significant other come through and delete your season of what you were trying to watch... just so they can record the latest episode of Burn Notice (haha, what is burn notice anyway?) PLUS you get access to more content than whats on the regular (read: free... for now) HULU.com with full season always being available and online presumably the day after they air! And people are complaining about this?

Clearly we'd all like it to be free OR no ads, but really I have never had an issue with HULUs ads and I think people are thinking a little lofty about this. This is a decent deal folks. Plug your phone or your iPad into the TV (until its released on XBOX and PS3 when we'll get some real HD from start to finish) if you want to watch it sitting... ditch that cable subscription, get or keep your Netflix account, and lets all be happy. Thats what I'm doing.

Sorry, but that's useless. It doesn't even list the $4.99 plan. More importantly, even if one accepts your data, over 50% of the users are under $14 per month - so your own data proves you wrong.

I see all these people here bitching and complaing about the whole pay + ads idea.. and if its not for you, then its not for you... but I don't see what the big problem here is.

With the exception of a few choice shows and live events, HULU has a large amount of the stuff a lot people like/want to see. Now most (see I said, "most") people who have conventional TV services in their homes pay anywhere form 70 to 100+ dollars a month, before HBO and other premium channels. You PAY for that. AND you still have commercials... 3-5 per break, sometimes a minute long. Oh, and theres DVR (which for me when I used to have cable was an extra 8 bucks a month). Nice, except you have to deal with having a limited hard drive space so you can't hold everything you want. And most people - not us techies and appleinsider readers of course - don't know how to easily get that content from their DVR box to their phones or iPads or other portable devices. Sure you can ffwd thru ads with a DVR, but in the time you spend fast forwarding, then concentrating on not going to far and having to back up to where the commercial break ends and the show resumes, you usually spend about 30 seconds on this. Thats all the time it takes for the 1 hulu ad. no concentration or remote searching necessary.

Ok so HULU has commercials, but only 1 per break, and again usually only :30 seconds long. Barely long enough to get up and go do something during the break. They are asking 10 bucks a month for this new feature, available in High Def, anywhere you are, at any time, on your phone or iPad or iPod, with no having to measure how much of your hard drive your DVR is taking up, or having your pesky roommate/kid/significant other come through and delete your season of what you were trying to watch... just so they can record the latest episode of Burn Notice (haha, what is burn notice anyway?) PLUS you get access to more content than whats on the regular (read: free... for now) HULU.com with full season always being available and online presumably the day after they air! And people are complaining about this?

Clearly we'd all like it to be free OR no ads, but really I have never had an issue with HULUs ads and I think people are thinking a little lofty about this. This is a decent deal folks. Plug your phone or your iPad into the TV (until its released on XBOX and PS3 when we'll get some real HD from start to finish) if you want to watch it sitting... ditch that cable subscription, get or keep your Netflix account, and lets all be happy. Thats what I'm doing.

Really? You'd get an ipad so you can pay $10/month to watch TV with ads? Don't get get that for free at home?

My last comment on this 'cuz I'm tired of it. Try to follow me, I'll type s l o w. . .

1_ Maybe just maybe no one who takes their survey has the $4.99 plan, even you said "everyone" you know has the $8.99 plan. Or maybe just maybe they combined the $8.99 and the $4.99 into one (the green) since they are both 1 at a time.

2_ 65% have 2 dvds or more plans (6%, 36%, 23%) and don't tell me the 2 at a time is $13.99 and that's not $14, that's like saying the Hulu plan is not $10 it's $9.99 (and other similarly priced items) - it's the same thing. I'll give you a penny if it's that important to you.

You can have the final word - I'm ghost.

:meso.

Honestly, I think this is going to be the future. The content itself costs money to develop, and the entertainment industry can't give this away forever (even if they could, their shareholders wouldn't be happy about it).

Not saying I like it (esp. to pay plus get ads), just that I think most of the distribution is going to try to exact some payment for access.

So is it called plus because I have to watch the ads PLUS pay for the "service". Pick one or the other hulu, you can't have both.

Clearly, Hulu needs to become profitable quickly or it will cease to exist as a going concern.

You must have really horrible DSL provider. I stream HD Netflix over Wimax just fine and it is usually slower then DSL.

I'll stick with my SlingBox Pro and it's $30 App store app. I can watch whatever i want whenever i want for a one time price. works great everywhere i go.

SlingBox is great and an option, but it's certainly not the best option if you want to watch non-current content and is quite pricey upfront for the HW and app.

Season 6 of Rescue Me just started. I've never seen the show but have always wanted to catch it. Hulu.com lists:

Availability Notes: We are able to offer 3 rolling episodes of Rescue Me Season 5.
Season 6 episodes are on a one-month delay. The season premiere is expected July 30. But they said Hulu Plus would list complete seasons. Netflix shows season 1 through 5 as available for streaming, but if Hulu PLus also includes season 6 episodes well before the DVD hits, usually just before the next season starts, then Hulu Plus then has a benefit the others may not be able to compete with.

I don't see why people are upset there is a choice of multiple services to suit various viewer types.

Plus, I've found Slingbox to be more difficult to set up with my home wireless network than it should be - and it tends to lose its connection and need to be reconfigured. Now, a GOOD Slingbox would be a nice thing to have. Might be a good acquisition for Apple.

The problem I have would be paying for a subscription and still being force fed ads.

Don't most of us already do that with cable and satellite for most TV stations?