My Thoughts on Hulu Plus

When it came out some time last year that Hulu was going to start charging for their service, people were up in arms about it. I decided to wait it out to see how they would do it, stating that if they kept their then free service and charged for value added stuff, it wouldn’t be at all bad. Well, Hulu Plus was announced a few days ago and they did just that.

As it stands, on Hulu you can get the last few trailing episodes of the current season of several TV shows and a ton of movies and clips. That will not change. Instead, what Hulu Plus offers you is a lot more for $9.99/month.

• Entire current seasons of some of the best shows on TV
• Entires Series of select shows like Arrested Development, Law & Order: SVU, Grey’s Anatomy, 30 Rock, and a lot more
• Access to Hulu on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
• Access to Hulu on select TVs and Blu-ray players
• Coming Soon: Access to Hulu on PS3 and Xbox 360.

I think this is the best possible way for Hulu to make money; they gave the people a lot more for a pretty good price. It’s no secret that people want more, faster, anywhere they can get it. With services like Netflix, there is generally a wait period for new movies and TV shows and they might not be available on Instant right away. That means you’ll need to wait 2 days at least between disks if you’re watching a season of some show. The other issue for Hulu Plus would be DVR devices; however, your DVR can’t possibly hold all of what Hulu Plus has to offer. Plus, if you happen to forget one night, you could be SOL.

That’s not to say Hulu Plus is a replacement for Netflix or DVR. Actually, I think Hulu Plus found itself a nice little niche right in between the two. They don’t have the vast collection of movies and TV that Netflix has, and you can’t catch sports games or most other channels, or rewind, etc without DVR. Hulu Plus simply another service for TV fans.

That being said, since I have Netflix and MLB.TV, it’s not very likely that I will pay for Hulu Plus (right now at least). Most of  the shows I like are either on Netflix instant or I own them, and I’m not usually one to just pick up and watch a new show unless a lot of people tell me I should like it (though How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory are on my list). I think Hulu Plus is for people who don’t have Netflix or for people who like to take a lot of time to watch new TV shows. And there are a lot of people like that. I’d say Hulu Plus is worth it for most people, especially if you love TV.

I’ll leave you with this, Hulu’s introduction to Hulu Plus. Let me know what you guys think!