Hulu May Launch Ad-Free Service

Megalith

Megalith

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If you ask most people what they hate most about Hulu, it's probably ads. Now, the streaming service seems to finally be addressing that.

Codenamed "NOAH", which expands to "No Ads Hulu", the ad-free service may be launched as early as this fall, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
 
Well that's certainly going to let them and everyone else know how much people are willing to pay to be without ads. If it's $7.99 with limited ads and 12-14 with none, people can choose.
 
Don't they mean "re-launch" without ads? I thought it started out with Hulu standard having ads and Hulu+ having more selection and no ads.
 
DejaWiz said:
Don't they mean "re-launch" without ads? I thought it started out with Hulu standard having ads and Hulu+ having more selection and no ads.
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Nope. "Hulu Plus" was the service when it a) was outside of a PC web browser (on game consoles, mobile devices, etc.), b) included full current seasons of certain shows instead of just the most recent 5, and c) did not include content which was specifically licensed only for the web browser version of the service. There have been a few shows that have been ad-free at times (haven't seen this for a long time) but that's not what the fee was for; the fee was primarily for getting access outside the PC.
 
By the way, I use the word "was" above since they're supposedly getting rid of the "Plus" name soon.
 
Killdozer said:
Hulu may launch an ad-free service, then I may sign up for Hulu.
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All these things start out ad free...then advertisement creep starts inside of a year.

Paying for cable used to get you no adverts...look how times have changed.
 
It's about time. I'd definitely subscribe to it if the commercials were removed and it's reasonably priced. Hulu Plus looks bad next to Amazon Prime and Netflix streaming.
 
pxc said:
Hulu Plus looks bad next to Amazon Prime and Netflix streaming.
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Seriously I don't know why anyone would pay for Hulu.


Regarding cable, I remember when it was $29.99 per month without any crazy upcharges, and it had just as many channels I would watch then as I do now.
 
I wouldn't mind this if they also allowed multiple streams at the same time. netflix has a 3rd tier, and the perks for that are you can stream to 4 devices simultaneously. for hulu it is only one stream at a time per account, so if someone downstairs wanted to watch something different from the person upstairs, they can't. but i would gladly pay a little more for this if it was included in this more expensive tier. otherwise, almost double the price for just no ads doesn't seem very appealing.
 
Killdozer said:
Seriously I don't know why anyone would pay for Hulu.


Regarding cable, I remember when it was $29.99 per month without any crazy upcharges, and it had just as many channels I would watch then as I do now.
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Course back then, all you needed was a solder iron and a screwdriver to get HBO.
 
Babbster said:
Nope. "Hulu Plus" was the service when it a) was outside of a PC web browser (on game consoles, mobile devices, etc.), b) included full current seasons of certain shows instead of just the most recent 5, and c) did not include content which was specifically licensed only for the web browser version of the service. There have been a few shows that have been ad-free at times (haven't seen this for a long time) but that's not what the fee was for; the fee was primarily for getting access outside the PC.
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Thanks for the clarification. :)
 
Sp33dFr33k said:
Well that's certainly going to let them and everyone else know how much people are willing to pay to be without ads. If it's $7.99 with limited ads and 12-14 with none, people can choose.
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I agree completely. It will be interesting to see how much ad revenue is really offsetting the cost for them. Can they offer it ad free for only $2 more? or does the ads offset the cost so much it would double? This might give an idea into other services what you might expect to pay if you wanted it ad free.

What I think they might do for pricing is wait until Netflix announces what their new rate will be, and try to match that. If Netflix goes to $10 Hulu might try to chase that and offer at the same rate. Otherwise I'm going to guess they will probably come up with something like $12.99 cause I think $15 is going to be too much for them to have any takers.
 
You mean Hulu might actually launch a service I'd actually pay for?

Shiiiit!
 
Got hulu now. Wife watches it all the time. I catch maybe 1-2 shows/season on it. Regardless, I would pay $5-10/month to get back 3-5 minutes of my life per 1hr (45min really) episode.

I have no idea how anybody watches live tv these days. Commercials eat up 12-15min of a "1hr show". That's 4-5hrs per season of each show. I have a tablo to record shows not on hulu but I would never watch those live. Skipping commercials still takes 10-15secs but that's ok considering 3-5min w/o skipping. I've caught myself watching live tv at a friends/family house and I'm always like WTF is this crap... I'll suffer through live tv for the super bowl or occasional sporting event but I got better uses for my time than watching an ad about something I do not want nor need.

Now what scares me more though are all the ads creeping into websites. Used to be popups or something you could quickly get rid of. Now they make you wait 30secs or so. Couple years it will be a minute and just keep going up. I guess somebody needs to invent an auto crawler for websites that removes ads.
 
I had Hulu Plus for a year or so when I cut the cord. The kids only used Netflix and Amazon, wife and I don't really watch anything but movies occasionally. Hulu just wasn't worth $8 a month plus the ads. Especially the same effin' ads over and over and over again. So I had to cancel it. Haven't missed it, don't think I would return even for an ad-free version.
 
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