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Why I cancelled my Hulu Plus account

I had concerns about what Hulu Plus would offer from the outset, and it was actually worse than I thought.

Hulu provided me with two months of free Hulu Plus to try it out. I signed up for it because I wanted to watch Hulu in high-definition on my TV, instead of on my laptop. What glorious times would be had!

After installing the app on my PlayStation 3, I logged in to my Hulu account and went to my subscription list. The subscription list shows all the TV shows I subscribe to and the settings I have for each of them. I went through show after show after show, and they all said “Web only” on them. There were a few shows I could watch on the TV, like Community, House and The Colbert Report. But the shows I enjoyed the most, like Louie, Chuck, and Suits, were not available on the TV or on mobile devices.

Meh. Well, I’ll live with some shows I guess. Right? Maybe if the shows actually worked.

I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart one day, and the show kept freezing to buffer – again and again. Every few seconds. It was un-watchable. The commercials played fine, but the show would freeze up. I set the video to standard definition even thinking it was a bandwidth issue, and it still froze. Which had me pulling my laptop out again to watch the show, which of course was what I was trying to avoid with Hulu Plus.

And then I started looking through the collection of shows Hulu had. I found an old classic, Chappelle’s Show. I had good laughs again. But then there were the commercials. I’m expected to pay for this service at $7.99 per month when that’s what Netflix is charging me without commercials. I put Chappelle’s Show on my Netflix instant queue and watched it sans commercials.

Speaking of commercials, I went even further into the classics and found Macross Plus was on Hulu. Here was an anime series that doesn’t have commercial breaks being cut up into segments to insert Hulu’s commercials. Again, my Netflix instant queue solved that problem real quick. (Oh yeah, Macross Plus was also not allowed to stream to the TV with Hulu, but it did with Netflix.)

So before Hulu charged me a single month for their service, I had cancelled it. I couldn’t watch the shows I wanted on my TV. When they would play, they wouldn’t always work. And I was still bombarded with ads.

I know I railed against Netflix for their new pricing structure, but I guess it is true that they still offer more than anyone else for less.

Thanks, Hulu! Your free trial showed me your service just isn’t worth it!

Netflix tries “Kids” menu

Several months ago, I sat through several meetings with a particular movie server company who had felt the effects of the economy decline just like everyone else. Instead of shrinking back in the face of the new economic reality, they refocused their brand through the use of market research in order to actually increase business even in these times. Their results were surprising.

This company surveyed their clients to see what movies are actually being watched the most. It wasn’t Gladiator, The Matrix or Iron Man. In fact, of the top 5, 4 of them were Pixar, and one was Dreamworks Animation. And this was by a lot. As it turns out, children love watching the same content over and over again. And often.

Considering the market I’m in tends to target the techie guy, this was like a splash of cold water.

What this company did was create a new menu for children, and even a new child-friendly remote control. This way a child only has access to kid-friendly content, and they have it quickly and easily without having to learn how to read.

This is the general concept behind the new feature Netflix is testing. Called “Just for Kids,” the new Netflix menu only shows children’s content, and in an easy-to-use interface.

Scrolling across the top of the page horizontally is a small icon of dozens of famous children’s characters, like Sesame Street’s Big Bird, Hello Kitty, etc.



Once selected, a new menu appears with only episodes from this series.



There is no indication if this will roll out to everyone, or if they’re just testing it out. There is also no news on if the kid’s menu will lock out access to adult content so parents can let their kids have full reign without worry.

UPDATE: August 16, 2011

Netflix has rolled this out today. movies.netflix.com/Kids