Hulu on Disney+ Beta Ends Very Soon; What Will Official Rollout Look Like?

Even in a leap year, February can be a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of month. As the calendar turns to March, Disney executives and software engineers are thinking hard about the end of the Hulu on Disney+ beta test. The full version of Hulu on Disney+ is due to launch in March, but will there be any major differences between the beta version of the experience and the official interface? Will Hulu on Disney+ have all the titles on both streamers? The Streamable’s experts will break it all down.

• Disney executives have noted the beta test of Hulu on Disney+ “far exceeded” expectations.
• Various licensing agreements will keep Disney+ from carrying all Hulu titles for the present.
• From an interface standpoint, viewers should expect the one-app experience with Hulu and Disney+ to remain similar to its current form.

Way back in November, Disney announced that it would start migrating Hulu content to Disney+ in December in a public beta test of its one-app experience ahead of a promised full launch in March. The company had to ensure the software of its two streamers would play nicely with each other, and it also was not full owner of Hulu at the time. In fact, Disney is still in the process of completing its ownership of Hulu; it has forked over an $8.6 billion check to Comcast for the 33% stake of Hulu owned by that company, but could end up owing more before the sale is finally closed.

The most important question on the minds of viewers is whether Hulu on Disney+ will feature all titles available on Hulu alone. While the combined streaming experience will feature Hulu’s greatest hits like “The Bear” and the new historical drama “Shōgun,” it won’t carry every show and movie that audiences will find on Hulu currently. Some of the titles that stream on Hulu were licensed to that streamer using contract language that needs to be rewritten if it’s going to stream on another platform, and Disney has to get the licensor to agree to modify that language before the title in question is available on Disney+.

The Streamable has reached out to Disney for a full list of titles that won’t be available in the full launch of Hulu on Disney+ and will update readers if/when we receive a reply.

It’s likely Disney will keep working toward the goal of a full library integration, however. Speaking with Disney employees during a fireside chat in January, company global advertising president Rita Ferro acknowledged that making the full libraries of both services available through Disney+ creates a better viewing experience for audiences by making it easier to get to desired shows and movies.

“I definitely think consumers want to engage with content,” she said. “It’s discoverability of that content to allow you to find it, access it, and spend time watching it and what that experience will feel like.”

Will Disney+ Interface Change When Official Hulu Rollout Occurs?

From a standpoint of physical layout, it’s unlikely that the interface of Disney+ will change remarkably once the full Hulu experience launches in March. As seen above, Disney+’s featured content carousel puts Hulu front and center, making it the first tile that viewers see when they log in. Immediately underneath, the Hulu hub is prominently placed in the row of Disney’s popular franchises like Star Wars and Marvel.

Ferro noted during the fireside chat with employees that so far, the Hulu on Disney+ beta test had “far exceeded every metric” the company was hoping for.

“When you give (customers) the ability to discover that they have that content accessible in the experience they’re viewing it in, they spend more time on that content,” Ferro said.

If Disney is as pleased with the ability of customers to find content in the one-app Disney+/Hulu experience as Ferro’s words indicate, there would be little reason for the company to make sweeping visual changes to how customers find Hulu titles within the user interface. That means that the full launch of Hulu on Disney+ is quite likely to look essentially the same as it does now.

Within the Hulu tile, however, there’s potential for Disney to include a much more personalized experience. As of now, content rows in the Hulu hub are broken down into fairly generic categories and brands. User preferences from Hulu could be more fully integrated into the hub, perhaps allowing viewers to see which titles they watched last in the Hulu app and offering recommendations based on those choices.

Viewers can’t expect Disney+ to undergo a full overhaul when the full Hulu on Disney+ experience launches in March. Changes are likely to be subtle, at least at first, while Disney continues to work behind the scenes to modernize its licensing agreements and bring more Hulu titles to Disney+.