Would You Pay for Hulu?

As part of its quest for new sources of revenue, Hulu is ready to launch Hulu Plus, a new pay subscription service. The current ad-supported video service will remain largely intact, but $9.99 a month will get you access to a wider variety of shows and libraries of older episodes. Frankly, it sounds like a lousy deal.

I stopped watching Hulu regularly after "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" were removed from the site a few months ago. Sure, it was a convenient way to catch up on missed episodes of "Community" or "Glee," and take in the occasional free movie. On the other hand, I rarely just went to the site and browsed until I found something I wanted to watch. The indexing is terrible, and the interface always seems to require sifting through pages and pages of listings, with the most interesting offerings buried in a glut of third-tier reality shows. You have to know exactly what you're looking for, and it's so easy to miss what good shows and films are being offered. I always end up hearing about intriguing acquisitions like the British comedy "Spaced" and the Japanese anime "Mushishi" from other sources. I never get sucked into Hulu the way I have with Netflix, where I'm never not working my way through a huge queue of Instant Watch titles.

Speaking of Netflix, the film rental company's subscription service is going to be the major competitor of Hulu Plus. The two will cost roughly the same amount, if you go with Netflix's cheapest plan of two rentals by mail per month with access to their video library. Curiously, Hulu Plus will still have ads, and I'm assuming that it'll be the same one or two spots played over and over ad nauseum, that are laced through their free content. I suspect that Hulu is more interested in positioning itself as a possible alternative or add-on to traditional television cable plans, which have also been incorporating video-on-demand services. I had Comcast On-Demand for a few months, which operated like a pared-down Hulu with a few free shows and movies, but mostly it felt like a handy vehicle to shill their pay-per-view titles and premium channels. It was certainly not worth forking over extra dollars for, and I dropped it as soon as I realized I had the option to.

Of course Netflix is still primarily a DVD rental service and the cable companies supply live television. Hulu's entire game is providing the ability to watch its content on demand, a service that is really only supplemental for the other two. Yet Netflix has a better system in place, for the same cost to the consumer, and no ads. The only thing that would distinguish Hulu is the quality of its content. Right now the free version of Hulu only carries a limited number of "trailing" episodes of current television shows, usually the most recent three or four, so viewers can catch up to the live airings. Hulu Plus would provide access to full seasons, plus entire series runs of older shows. But a quick glance at the "Content" page of the new service reveals a surprising emphasis on network and syndicated shows, with few titles from the most basic cable tiers, let alone from the premium channels. In fact, there seems to be little that isn't featured in the free section of the site already, just with more episodes available.

Hulu Plus is also offering the ability to watch shows on peripheral devices like gaming consoles, iPods, and iPads, along with higher quality HD. I can see why those who are currently purchasing their television shows an episode or two at a time from iTunes or Amazon would benefit from having full seasons of multiple shows available to them all at once for these devices. I have friends waiting for DVD box sets of certain shows to be released so they can catch up via purchase or rental. Then again, episodes bought from iTunes don't carry advertisements and can be kept for as long as the purchaser wants. And while I can see wanting to marathon through a lot of episodes of a favorite show all at once, I don't think anyone would keep a subscription to Hulu Plus for more than a month or two for the privilege.

I'm sure someone who has the time to go through a lot of content quickly would get their money's worth with Hulu Plus, but anybody reasonably tech-savvy and media-savvy is going to realize pretty quick that they're just paying for reruns.