Take a look at a new subscriber’s first impressions of Hulu
Take a look at a new subscriber’s first impressions of Hulu
Disney’s general entertainment streamer has a lot to offer, but also a glaring drawback.
With all the efforts Disney has made to include its general entertainment streaming service Hulu in various bundles, it can be hard to parse out the offerings the streamer has on its own. That’s why I decided to dive back into the Disney streaming ecosystem to give Hulu a try; check out my impressions of Hulu below, and see if it sounds like a service you’d want to add to your lineup!
What do you need to know about Hulu before subscribing?
Free trial for all?
When you sign up for standalone Hulu service, the streamer’s website makes a concerted effort to get you to subscribe to one of several Disney Bundles instead. You can combine Hulu with Disney+, Disney+ and Max, or Disney+ and ESPN+ if you prefer.
The only way to get the 30-day free trial Hulu offers is to opt for its standalone platform, however. It’s important to note that Hulu’s sign-up page does not offer the trial choice with Hulu’s ad-free plan; only the ad-supported option ($10 per month once the trial ends) comes with the trial.
Less variety
If you sign up to Hulu without any of the various Disney Bundle permutations that are available, don’t expect to see the same kind of content variety you would if you bought into a bundle. There’s no live sports programming on Hulu normally, and news content is restricted to the ABC News Live free streaming channel.
That isn’t to say there’s nothing to watch on Hulu. The streamer has an impressive lineup of titles to love, including “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear,” “Only Murders in the Building,” a wide selection of animated shows for adults, next-day streams of ABC and Fox primetime shows, and more. There’s just a little less variety than you’d get with other streamers.
User interface: not bad, but nothing special
The Hulu user experience is more or less in line with every other on-demand streaming service I’ve tried in my lifetime. It’s got all the standard tile rows; shows recommended based on my watching history, a top-10 list to show what other customers are watching on the service, newly-added movies, etc.
The top of the screen also comes with the standard options to filter content and display only TV shows, movies, news or the items saved in the “My Stuff” tab. It’s very easy to save shows to keep track of in the My Stuff section, using the vertical three-dot menu that’s available on every title’s tile.
One thing I do appreciate about Hulu is that clicking on a show or movie’s tile doesn’t simply start playing that episode automatically. It takes me to the show’s details page instead, which allows me to call up a particular episode, add the show to My Stuff or browse more information about it. This may just be a personal preference, but I would rather go through this extra layer than have the show start playing automatically and force me to click again if I want to find a specific episode.
The “Hubs” tab at the top of the Hulu screen is interesting to explore. It’s a good attempt by the service to group major brands or genres together, so viewers can find more of the varieties of content they like most. I found the layour of this page a little clumsy, but overall it was a good effort at trying to make content discovery a little easier.
Infuriating ad experience
Without a doubt, Hulu’s ad experience is the worst I’ve ever had on a streaming service. I can name several free, ad-supported streamers that do a better job of varying ads — not to mention showing fewer of them.
Hulu frequently showed me the same ads over and over again, sometimes playing the same commercial multiple times in an ad block. These adverts ranged from products I might consider to items or services I would never try, but worst by far was the sheer volume of ads I saw.
Ads per hour of viewing on Hulu can reach as high as 10 minutes, and I definitely experienced that level of bombardment when trying to watch. It was the closest experience I’ve had to watching a show on linear TV in this respect, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.
Final thoughts
Hulu’s lineup of originals, primetime shows from popular broadcast channels and other shows and movies make it a worthwhile streaming service from a catalog perspective. Its user interface will be very familiar to anyone who has tried on-demand streaming before, and it’s easy to track the titles you want to continue watching when they put out new episodes.
The ad experience is bad. Really bad. The good news is, Hulu gives you a 30-day trial to let you decide if you can stomach it or not. If you can, everything else about Hulu makes it a worthwhile streamer to keep past the one-month trial offer.
Hulu
Hulu is a video streaming service that gives access to thousands of full seasons of exclusive series, hit movies, kids shows, and Hulu Originals like “Only Murders in the Building,” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”