If you are on the fence between major digital content service providers, then here is my input.[ EDIT ] On 9/15/23, Hulu increased their prices (again) another $5.00 / month. This means that in the past 4 years alone, Hulu has DOUBLED their service price. Now 81.99 / month. [ /END EDIT ][ EDIT ] On 8/14/23, Saturday afternoon, HULU went down for a total of 14 hours, before recovering. The entire country (America) was down. No channels worked. Football season openers could not be watched, anywhere. Customer service was shut off. No website update. No bulletin for the outage. And No credits or public announcement once they recovered the next Day. HULU went dark. And to this day has never acknowledged the issue, even though it effected millions of households.[ /END EDIT]When the Hulu tech works, it is amazing. We have this on 7 devices, and are constantly bouncing from one to the other. We have gigspeed at home. And a high bandwidth unlimited plan for our phones or mobile devices. I'll repeat this, because when it works, the whole Hulu system (and tie ins to Disney+, etc other providers) works fantastic. That said...a) We've been with them for almost 4.5 years. Prices have more th DOUBLED (from $40.00 / mo, up to $81.99 / mo) just in this time. Constant increases.b) Sound issues. Commercial advertisers must have an option to pay Hulu double, and receive 3x volume for the commercials. Some commercials blast their sound during commercial breaks while others do not. It is annoying for everyone.c) Drops during peak times. This used to be a bigger issue when it was only like $55.00 a month. But now at $75.00 per month, it only lags streaming occasionally during peak hours (6 pm - 8 pm). Some days are better than others. Note: gigabit network here.d) Password changes. They have a new policy it seems, and every 3 months they expire your Hulu password. This can be a royal PITA. Half your devices will work, half will fail to authenticate and ask for a reset. Hint- Reset all of your devices completely and try logging in again, and it helps SOME times. Most others, not...The ugly truth is that you will now have to RESET your password on ALL devices (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, Roku devices, and smart TV's). Yes, all of them. And that takes time. Time that most of us don't have, honestly. It sucks.e) Customer service. There almost is none. So, if for some reason you need to talk to a tech, you will need to login (authenticate) to their website in order to do so. No login.. no tech. Phone lines to customer service are jammed (read: long wait times). So if you are in a pinch to see something on time, and have issues with HULU, then you are likely screwed. My advice is to try to log in with another device (if possible), and record the program.. however that leads me to my next bullet point.f) Recording. Some times it works, and some times not. The Roku's and Smart TV's seem to do a good job of letting Hulu know to record something for you, however mobile devices suck, and desktop / laptops are spotty. So don't count on your recording actually happening. Really. Plus, oddly, some times, one or more of your shows will start recording themselves regularly, even when you do not have it set to "Record". Yup. It is very hard to reverse this on some channels too.g) Other networks. Disney Plus ,and ESPN Plus were absorbed about a year ago. This is good! Because my usual $45.00 a year subscription to PGA Tour Live (ESPN+) was covered by the $5.00/ month price increase that Hulu wanted from us to bring on this new carrier network. However the authentication between the two networks (while mostly good) is not perfect, and some times you will be needing to reset your password (AGAIN), to gain access to both. Just a heads up.h) Hulu locks up during commercials (often). If you have the package which includes commercials then you will see Hulu lock up during the last commercial shown, and basically freeze at that point. The live broadcast is continuing, however you are not seeing it. You must spot this, change channels, and then change back in order to catch the live broadcast where is has continued. This has been a problem for 6 months now. Some nights it happens often.i) Hulu loses sound all together. At any time at all, and it happens on all devices, the sound will completely go out for about 6 or 7 seconds. The video continues, however you can't hear any sound at all. Then it will come back all by itself. This has been a problem with Hulu for over 6 months now. I hope this helps someone make an educated decision. I've worked with a half dozen digital content service providers in the past, yet I am still sticking with HULU at the current price due to convenience with everything works right. It can be a really nice product when it works great.
