Posted on 08/08/2016 3:28:45 PM PDT by seastay
There is an odd game of musical chairs happening in the world of streaming television. Hulu, the service co-owned by many of the major broadcasters, announced that it will be eliminating its free tier, moving to a subscription-only model. At the same time, Yahoo announced a new streaming service, "Yahoo View," which "features" Hulu, and will let viewers see the five most recent episodes of the big broadcast shows for free. So consumers will still have largely the same set of choices, just in different places, and paid for by a different set of corporate backers.
Hulu is co-owned by Walt Disney, 21st Century Fox, Comcast, and as of last week, Time Warner. These companies want to use Hulu as a hedge against Netflix, where they sell their content and compete for time and consumer dollars. Making Hulu subscription-only allows them to better position it as a premium service that can house original content. By shifting it's lowest margin ad-supported streaming over to Yahoo, Hulu's ownership reduces friction with its own TV advertisers and positions Verizon, which just acquired Yahoo, as a source of substantial future revenue.
Hulu will still have advertising. The two current paid tiers — $7.99 a month with some ads and completely ad-free at $11.99 a month — are going to remain. The free tier being eliminated didn't have nearly the library of either of these paid options, and it was web only. For now Yahoo View will also be desktop web only, although the company promised in its announcement that a mobile website and app are coming.
This pricing has always been one of the reasons Hulu has occupied a slightly awkward position. It's owned by incumbent players in the world of television, but offers many of the same disruptive features as other cord-cutting options. This new structure helps to remove some of that friction, creating a standalone Hulu that is accessible only to paying subscribers, while preserving the free option under the umbrella of a different corporation.
I have RabbitTV which has live streaming channels for FoxNews, Bloomberg, and a couple others that are free. I pay ...it was $10/year but just this week it went to $24/year. It’s not the best but it also has a lot of TV (old and new), movies (old and new, some international and it has pay per view for newer stuff (movies, tv, and some sports) and shows that are normally pay tier anyway. The only real drawback is I can’t get the local channels (need to put up an antenna for where the house sits) and not a lot of regular sports stuff.
But between that and the free stuff on Amazon Prime - and of course Free Republic - I’m pretty much covered for what I need.
“I thought they had already done this. The last time I went there it required a subscription, and that’s been some time back.”
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Depends on which content you wanted to watch - some was free/some you had to subscribe. But they nudge you into subscribing to the paid service.
“Get one of these and you won’t need cable or Hulu or Netflix”
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Beware of buying any products - sticks, boxes, software, etc. - that claim to give you free tv. The best you’ll get is something you could easily do by yourself on your existing device.
OANN is accessible on RabbitTV also - just confirmed on mine.
I had already done it on a desktop I have connected to my TV.
The computer cost me $400 to build 5 years ago and consumes 350 watts.
The Android box I bought for $32 does the same thing and uses a cell phone charge for power.
It’s worth it from the electricity savings alone.
“I have RabbitTV”
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That’s one of the scams to avoid that I alluded to in my previous comment. You don’t need to pay anybody anything to do what it does.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/rabbit-tv-real-deal-or-swift-swindle
Bkmrk.
I thought Hulu fazed out the free-ad-based a long time ago.
Their no-ads subscription has fine print that reads ads may be attached at the beginning or end of some programs due to network contracts.
I tried the ‘free’ and found the same problems with it as with Crackle and other ad-based video services. About half-way through a program, usually after an ad break, the screen lock would lock up. The only way to proceed was to close the browser/window and reload Hulu/Crackle. Try to arrow to the last view area would cause a dozen ads to play — and the screen locking up again. It was more hassle than it was worth.
IIRC, some of Hulu programming requires one to log in through their ‘provider’ — that be cable or satellite.
Since network websites and cable On-Demand has most of the programs a day later, Hulu does not seem like much of a deal. If they offered ALL previous episodes, they might be worth it. But they only offer a few prior episodes.
Streaming services are still in the experimental stages. Netflix and Amazon Prime seem to have dependable operations.
Understood - but for convenience it serves it’s purpose of bringing everything into one place and I don’t have to keep 1000 links in my favorites or deal with a whole bunch of different websites.
with exception of the pay shows no one needs a service for nearly anything - if they are willing to jump around to a bunch of different sites when looking for different things to watch. I’m paying for the convenience.
“Understood - but for convenience it serves it’s purpose of bringing everything into one place and I don’t have to keep 1000 links in my favorites or deal with a whole bunch of different websites.
with exception of the pay shows no one needs a service for nearly anything - if they are willing to jump around to a bunch of different sites when looking for different things to watch. I’m paying for the convenience.”
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I understand, but I would disagree it’s all that much of a difficult do-it-yourselfer.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=watch+live+tv+stream
No thanks. I have a Roku 3 player and subscribe to both Hulu and Netflix. Both are still far cheaper than getting cable or satellite, and I can rent movies on Google Play.
People complaining about Netflix or Hulu cost increases but have no problem paying for the Internet to do the streaming.
“People complaining about Netflix or Hulu cost increases but have no problem paying for the Internet to do the streaming.”
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If a person ain’t ever griped about rising prices on something or other, he probably ain’t an American!
(And don’t get me started on when comoc books were great reading and cost 12 cents)
After watching a review I’d say a person would need to use a lot of patience with that box and not expect to get any resolution over 720p.
I’m watching mine right now. I have no resolution fetish, but it looks pretty good to me.
If you get Hulu, pay the extra $4.00 and get the commercial free version. Best $4.00 a month I ever paid.
I have an Antennae (No Cable Etc) ... I get Three Channels, all Three are Spanish so I have “Late Night Background Noise”
6 years now and if I add it up ... that’s about $8,000 available for other bills etc.
(My EX still has not Thanked me... WTF?)
No AC either ... haven’t done the Math on that yet but I figure it keeps me in Beer.
*** “Get one of these and you won’t need cable or Hulu or Netflix” ***
For us that just graduated from a flip phone... what is this magic box, what does it do and how many 12 year olds does it take to make it work?
It is basically a computer with HDMI TV output running the Android operating system. There is an Android app called Kodi that is an open source media center.
There are third-party addons for Kodi like Exodus...
https://www.tvaddons.ag/exodus/
...that access a database of all the TV and movie files on the Internet. You can watch them as easily as you watch them on Netflix. All you need is a broadband connection and a TV with HDMI input.
Yeah, I’m not much into current alien, etc., movies either. Did watch an interesting documentary on Netflix tonight, The Last Man On The Moon. I was too young in the 60’s to fully appreciate the history of it all happening, so did enjoy watching those clips.
Not really into the old TV shows, but might give Hulu a try. Thanks for your comments.
Hate commercials, so would definitely pay the extra, thanks.
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