Hulu Falls from Top 10 Online Video Rankings

I have used Crackle, Netflix, and Amazon Prime/Instant.

I used to use Hulu a bit as well but the main reason I don't use it anymore is I don't want to pay for it to use on my roku box when I can just watch it on my pc for free. This has resulted in less viewing in general for me because I just go to my amazon/netflix before I will go to my computer. I think this is where they got themselves in trouble.

If they allowed you to watch a smaller collecting in SD on a roku/ps3/other devices I think they would get a lot more viewer traffic which would lead to more subscriptions.

I was very excited about Hulu and was one of the first paid subscribers. I dumped them after 3 months. I will not be paying for a video service and still watch ads. 90% of the shows you can watch free over the air and if I do miss a recording due to a scheduling error (I'm looking at you CBS Sunday) then I can just watch it for free on Hulu a couple of days later. If they dropped the ads for paying customers I would consider re-upping with them.

Hear this Hulu+ and all interested parties-

I WILL NOT pay for content with ads. Ever. Again.

This is why I, and i'm sure, MANY others here have entirely ditched cable.

Hear this HBO, SHOWTIME, et al. - Please let me buy your content (a la' HBO GO) without a cable TV subscription. The moment you let this happen, i'll stop getting your content from other sources.

Thank you.
-b

+1
I will not pay to watch ads, they should up the fee and remove the ads. I am fine with that. Honestly the networks and cable content providers should get together and do an end run around all the Dish/Cable player. Come up with a service with for a fee I get some set of channels and then me a la carte channels, problem is they'll never do this because their higher cost channels subsidize their lesser channels, but in the end we would get better content.

I also dropped HULU for two reasons: 1: the content just didn't rival Netflix.
2: I also do not want to pay a fee and still have to deal with commercials.
Fix those issues and I might be back.
HULU was pretty good for TV shows, but I'm more of a movie guy, so for me, HULU was far inferior to Netflix in this regard.

I tried it for a month. Then I dropped it. If I want advertising, I'll stick to what I have already got. HULU+ is no plus, and they should be ashamed of themselves. If they want to be supported by advertising, then don't charge for the service. If they want my money, then don't ruin my precious time with advertising. They want it both ways, and that is why they aren't in the top 10.

Could not have said it better myself. I mean here we are paying for a legit service, and then only to be watching commercial after commercial. Watching via other sources with no commercials, is a sigh of relief. When I see a brief pause then the tv show starts right up again where it left off, I'm like, "Thank goodness for no commercials!" What's more, even as a plus member on Hulu, many tv shows are only stored there for a short period then removed. So some shows don't let you go back and start from the beginning of a season if you are behind and need to catch up. LAME

The worst part about Hulu+ for me was not the ads as much as the fact that nearly none of the shows I cared to watch were not available outside of the PC. So it was useless from the kids' Xbox or on my iPad. That is a total failure!

They do have too many ads even in the free edition... But at least they are far better managed than those of the iPad's ABC app which forces you to click on small movies to start the ads, and impose delays of 90 seconds when an app is 30. Uh, I really have to watch it more than once? Another greedy failure that is going to make me and others just stop watching their shows.

Blame the content holders, they determine if any of their shows stream and where. Any so called greed issues are their domain.

It does not really matter though... At the end of the day, Hulu advertises that its Hulu+ service allows one to watch everywhere, and they charge for it. If the shows are then not available (something that you do not know until you subscribe) it is their failure as a product offering. Maybe they would not pay the extra licensing fee, maybe the content owner thought that showing on an iPad would cannibalize some other channel (they are paranoid that way). It does not matter: Hulu+ asks for money, does not deliver, and to add insult to injury keeps ads on the few shows available still.

I would pay for Hulu with Comercials if I can "build my own programming"

As In select the channels I want and only pay for the ones I want on an individual basis. So I would choose History, Discover, Travel, Food Network, HGTV, AMC, Showtime, and HBO. This way I would get the programming I want and only pay for the channels I watch. This would also increase the competition between the content providers in my opinion so they would work harder to provide better shows.

I think the sad part is, they might never change these things because the masses, they LOVE being advertised to; apparently. You can't keep me in a room with a commercial man, I don't know how people do it; especially around this time of year.

WORD!

I'm proud to say that my 4 year old has seen maybe 10 commercials her entire life. I know in the U.K. the BBC charges for a "television license" and I don't think that they are interrupted every 6 mins or so with ads. I've never watched TV _in_ Brittan or the E.U. so,
how does it work in other countries? Excellent programming comes out of these "socialist" networks, so they get funded in some fashion.

I know there's a mindset out there that thinks "We wouldn't have T.V. if it wasn't for advertising dollars, and it our obligation to watch and accept companies plastering our eyeballs with marketing." But, I reject this notion. I, for one am working to try to change the model in the most American way possible, with my moolah. T.V. was, and still is, one of the most important inventions ever. Think of the network island that is now PBS. How could anyone be against educational, entertaining and mostly Ad-free TV? I'd hazard to guess that PBS is more like how TV works in the UK, excepting that the BBC doesn't have to _beg_ for donations to keep rolling. How do we take back T.V. from the parasite that has attached itself to the heart of the host at it's infancy? Will our children also tolerate the status quo? Knowing that kids learn largley by observation, my child will not.

-b

Yep, agree with everyone else so far. I stopped watching Hulu when I couldn't get it on my Samsung Galaxy tablet. I wasn't going to pay for Hulu+ just so I could watch commercials on my tablet...

I have the Netflix streaming and blu-ray disc package that keeps me entertained. With one Netflix account with one set price, I can stream to my laptop, my tablet, or my Roku box hooked up to my HT rig with the 100" projection screen.

The TV licenses do provide funding. There are also private channels that are not funded through the licenses but through subscription (e.g. Canal+ etc.). There are also laws that regulate how much advertising can be done, and when. For example in France on public channels there cannot be any advertisement after 8pm. Imagine that here! Also movies cannot be cut, etc... Those things change a bit (there used to be advertisement up to 8:30pm, and it may come back due to financing issues).

It boils down to culture. We (Europeans) are willing to pay for something we don't always use in return for what we perceive as a bigger return when we use it (e.g. TV license to have a better watching experience; taxes in exchange for unconditional health care; etc.). In North America and especially in the U.S. there seem to be this sense that if you pay for more than what you actually use at a given time someone is stealing from you. So everybody pays (too much, I will say!) for their tailored tiered TV, Internet, etc. and on top of that watches ads! It is like being double or tripled taxed.

I also think that there is no real market competition in telephony and entertainment (ever wondered why when someone prices out the cost of a smart phone for a typical usage over a 2 year contract, all the providers come within a few dollars of each other even though on paper their plans are very different)?

For the record, in Paris (where I don't live---I am US based) my sister gets unlimited 20 MBps Internet; unlimited cable; and wired phone with free calling oversees for $35 a month. Try to get ANY ONE of those in the States for that amount.

Ok, now I miss home... And if I were home, I would miss here too, probably

I watch some TV shows on Hulu and really don't care much about the commercials. I have the free version and it works for me. Granted, it makes a difference if you are multi-tasking on your PC while working on something else, or have a HTPC so that you can use the free version (even if it has ads) wherever you want.

A lot of these places have their niche. YouTube is a mixed bag of information, comedy, stupidity, etc. You never know what you will get, and it is geared towards the A.D.D. in all of us.

Netflix is historically known for movies.

Hulu for TV.

So on and so forth.

So if I really want to watch a show, I will record it on my DVR (and skip commercials). If I know that it is something that I will watch while working on my PC when working from home or when I travel, then I will use Hulu (free).