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!
