Can Hulu Plus Succeed? We Think So.

Posted by ad on Aug 13, 2010 in Connected TV | 0 comments

This post originally appeared on ScenePR!

For years, this uber-consumer of TV programming confidently calls herself an early adopter in all technologies that allow her to watch it whenever and wherever she wants.

Enter the ground-breaking launch of Hulu in March 2008. Our co-dependent relationships with TiVo, its Season Pass and cable provider were suddenly on the skids. After some effort that questioned our technological prowess, we temporarily disconnected cable and sought our TV fix through a MacBook Pro connected to our HDTV to enormous success.

As more and more programming appeared on Hulu, our TiVo found itself in a regular state of rest. However, we did hit the wall with our iPad as Hulu offers programming in Flash, which is unsupported by Apple’s line of portable devices…until now.

Meet Hulu Plus, the new subscription service offering access to programming content including all episodes, from all seasons of several series for $9.99/month. Sound good? There’s more. It’s available as an App on the iTunes Store for both the iPhone and iPad, eliminating access issues due to the lack of Flash.

Price-wise, Hulu Plus has a huge advantage over the iTunes Store by offering content for $9.99/month vs. the per season iTunes rate of $1.99/episode and a Buy Season option way north of $9.99. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it almost is.

Heavy users of Hulu and it’s downloadable on demand player, Hulu Desktop, can certainly attest to the wealth of programming available. While there are some restrictions, such as when and how many episodes are available, generally it’s an extraordinary option for those who want to watch programming online.

Hulu Plus content, however, is different in a couple of significantly negative ways. It doesn’t offer the same programming as it’s free counterpart – much, much less in fact – and users are still subjected to the intermittent commercial breaks. After receiving my Hulu Plus preview invite, entering my credit card information (not a free public-beta) and downloading the app to my iPad, I was ready to watch the remaining episodes of the current season of Hell’s Kitchen (Fox), when I hit the wall. The series is not available on Hulu Plus although every episode is on Hulu for free. I continued searching for additional programming and again found myself repeatedly coming up blank.

If Hulu Plus can expand their content offering to include everything currently available on Hulu, with access to the full library of episodes, we’d happily deal with the commercial breaks for $9.99 a month. Until then, Hulu and I will resume our love-affair of free programming online, wherever and whenever I want…except on my iPad.