The new Hulu(new.hulu.com)
new.hulu.com
The new Hulu
http://new.hulu.com
15 comments
I use Hulu daily, and am a subscriber, and I have to say I LOVE this new layout. I clicked on popular shows. Clicked on The Office. Drop down by season. Zipped through the episodes, and picked one.
I don't think it gets any easier than this.
It also remembered the last episode I was watching above the other episodes. Perfect.
Before, to pick a season, you had to pick 1 or the highest season, then do a strange paging thing to get all the way back to the first episode. It was a mess.
The viewing area is now larger it seems, with more "black" area around it without having to turn on the night vision thing.
At any rate, as an avid user, I think they nailed it.
I don't think it gets any easier than this.
It also remembered the last episode I was watching above the other episodes. Perfect.
Before, to pick a season, you had to pick 1 or the highest season, then do a strange paging thing to get all the way back to the first episode. It was a mess.
The viewing area is now larger it seems, with more "black" area around it without having to turn on the night vision thing.
At any rate, as an avid user, I think they nailed it.
First thing I did was click Browse->TV->Popular. List of shows. Click on a Show. Right under episodes to the right there is a drop-down with the list of available episodes.
I am not saying its perfect, but is it nearly as bad as you are making it out to be?
I am not saying its perfect, but is it nearly as bad as you are making it out to be?
I am not seeing that. Let's take the top TV show that I see on the Popular page right now that you mention - http://new.hulu.com/grimm. The drop down says "All Seasons (24 episodes)". It's a filter for the horizontal slide show viewer to limit it to only season 1 or season 2. There's no list of episodes. There's also a sort order drop down with default "air date", although air dates are not shown nor listed, it's just to select that as the sorting order. Do you mean some other drop down?
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I haven't seen the new Hulu yet (blocked by corporate proxy), but their old design was only good when I was logged out. Once I logged in, the "popular shows" list was removed and replaced with "your friends recently watched...". That option may still have been around, but I never found it.
It's tabletlicious.
"Sorry, currently our video library can only be watched from within the United States" - same as the old Hulu
Every conversation about Hulu gets highjacked by this kind of talk. We get it, its not changing anytime soon, and its not even Hulu's fault.
Now back to the topic at hand...
Now back to the topic at hand...
Well of course it does. Hulu does not want to sell to the majority of the world population, that's a pretty significant issue.
Also, it's irrelevant whether it's Hulu's fault or not. It needs to be brought up regularly, to put pressure on everyone (including Hulu). If we ignore the issue, we accept the status quo.
Look at it another way: for a large number of HN readers this news item is just an annoyance. Something we can't even check out. You see a news item, you click on the link and get a "nyah nyah nothing for you here, just go away". I'd say that merits a mention in the comments.
Also, it's irrelevant whether it's Hulu's fault or not. It needs to be brought up regularly, to put pressure on everyone (including Hulu). If we ignore the issue, we accept the status quo.
Look at it another way: for a large number of HN readers this news item is just an annoyance. Something we can't even check out. You see a news item, you click on the link and get a "nyah nyah nothing for you here, just go away". I'd say that merits a mention in the comments.
>its not changing anytime soon, and its not even Hulu's fault.
Of course it's Hulu's fault. Hulu's owned by NBC, FOX, and Disney. I am certain those three content providers could retain world-wide internet streaming rights for their shows and make them available in any number of countries.
As long as they make it impossible for the rest of the 6.4 billion people to watch their site, they're not only leaving money on the table, but they're encouraging people to pirate.
Of course it's Hulu's fault. Hulu's owned by NBC, FOX, and Disney. I am certain those three content providers could retain world-wide internet streaming rights for their shows and make them available in any number of countries.
As long as they make it impossible for the rest of the 6.4 billion people to watch their site, they're not only leaving money on the table, but they're encouraging people to pirate.
They could at least make the effort, even if the library available to each country starts out small.
This is not a terribly difficult restriction to get around:
1) Boot an ec2 instance in VA, US
2) ssh -D 8888 <ec2hostname>
3) Configure Chrome/FF to use a SOCKS proxy on localhost:8888Quoting the old Erlang meme: did you just tell me to go ---- myself?
Seriously. I won't jump through hoops to give others my money, broken copyright or not. I don't see a huge push by those companies to change the way things are. Wheres the lobbying for a global copyright or easier access rules? Where are the visible changes? As long as all those efforts don't lead to a change, they won't have my business.
Seriously. I won't jump through hoops to give others my money, broken copyright or not. I don't see a huge push by those companies to change the way things are. Wheres the lobbying for a global copyright or easier access rules? Where are the visible changes? As long as all those efforts don't lead to a change, they won't have my business.
Yes, Bob, I think he did.
I don't think you should pay them. I certainly don't. I was merely pointing out how I've been able to watch Hulu content while traveling outside the US.
I am not able to use Hulu (wrong country), but don't they at least have a travel mode? Spotify has one, for example.
How would you be giving Hulu any of your money when the shows are free to watch?
I know about Hulu Plus, but the subject of this particular discussion is their (free) website redesign.
You know what's even easier than that? BitTorrent.
I'm already using a VPN in the US to handle that (Netflix), but they reject my credit card (french one).
Any idea of a workaround ?
EDIT : typo
EDIT : typo
I think you can buy a US gift card[1] and use that instead. I haven't tried it, so don't quote me on it ;)
[1] - https://www311.americanexpress.com/BOLWeb/bolfeOrder.do?requ...
[1] - https://www311.americanexpress.com/BOLWeb/bolfeOrder.do?requ...
You could try purchasing a prepaid Visa, Mastercard, or American Express gift card online and have it shipped to you. I see that amazon.com has various prepaid gift cards. Another option I'd be less excited about is a "reloadable" (i.e. Green Dot) debit card. I believe most US issued reloadable cards require a social security number however.
Are you willing to wait "6 to 8 weeks?"
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/21/3257144/bitinstant-bitcoin...
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/21/3257144/bitinstant-bitcoin...
I was successful with a prepaid credit card with US dollar as the currency. Just go to entropay.com, create a credit card and put some money on it.
If you think that any one of those three steps is not far beyond the technical ability of most hulu users, you're dreaming.
And probably also beyond a lot of Hacker News readers' technical ability.
This is an interesting comment. I take it for granted that the majority of readers are pretty comfortable doing that kind of thing. Is there any way of telling what the real distribution is?
I doubt it. Maybe a survey. I'm one out of three. I could set up a socks proxy in chrome. As for the others, I'm sure I could learn them, but I have no idea where to start.
Have you actually tried? Can you pay for Hulu with a non-US credit card?
Sadly, that's not Hulu, that's the rights holders. And that's not changing for a long time.
Checkout http://www.unblock-us.com/ to get around this, i was able to watch olympics on bbc which was great
I wrote a blog post (http://goo.gl/PnaxJ) on this a while back along with a work around
meh... you can try thepiratebay.se
Wow, what a great site. I love the design of their new "our video library can only be streamed within the United States" message. Very readable, good typography, a big improvement over the previous version. This redesign is definitely a success!
Taking a few minutes, looking around, it's fine. In fact, I dig it. But was design ever the problem for Hulu? Content is king here, and Hulu just doesn't have it.
As a viewer, I expect a site like this has to either be niche, or truly all encompassing. I think things like Stargate or Highlander could support their own sites. Comedy Central was smart to do their stuff (South Park, Daily Show, Colbert) by show. CBS even does Star Trek on StarTrek.com. Hulu seems to try to do everything, but fails. I genuinely think they could do better if they spun off niche sites, crediting them all as "Brought to you by Hulu".
As a viewer, I expect a site like this has to either be niche, or truly all encompassing. I think things like Stargate or Highlander could support their own sites. Comedy Central was smart to do their stuff (South Park, Daily Show, Colbert) by show. CBS even does Star Trek on StarTrek.com. Hulu seems to try to do everything, but fails. I genuinely think they could do better if they spun off niche sites, crediting them all as "Brought to you by Hulu".
I am anxious to give Hulu my money, however the paid "plus" membership has way too many ads. I understand they have their business plan numbers worked out, but the payed membership shouldn't have the same number of ads as the free version.
There's a wildly successful and profitable business model for getting money for TV content. It's cable and satellite subscriptions. More than half of all households in the US pay for a cable subscription.
Everyone (in the US) gets TV content from the major networks for free -- just connect an antenna to your TV. You can pay to get more content, and access to previous seasons, by subscribing to cable or satellite. Subscribing doesn't reduce the ads at all, just gets you more things to watch.
Hulu is an exact replica of the business model, except using the web instead of radio and cable lines, as the delivery method.
Everyone (in the US) gets TV content from Hulu for free -- just browse to their website. You can pay to get more content, and access to previous seasons, by subscribing to Hulu Plus. Subscribing to Hulu Plus doesn't reduce the ads at all, just gets you more things to watch.
The only difference is that a cable subscription averages more than 10 times the monthly cost of Hulu Plus. To expect to not only pay 90% less than cable, but also eliminate the advertising, is unrealistic.
Everyone (in the US) gets TV content from the major networks for free -- just connect an antenna to your TV. You can pay to get more content, and access to previous seasons, by subscribing to cable or satellite. Subscribing doesn't reduce the ads at all, just gets you more things to watch.
Hulu is an exact replica of the business model, except using the web instead of radio and cable lines, as the delivery method.
Everyone (in the US) gets TV content from Hulu for free -- just browse to their website. You can pay to get more content, and access to previous seasons, by subscribing to Hulu Plus. Subscribing to Hulu Plus doesn't reduce the ads at all, just gets you more things to watch.
The only difference is that a cable subscription averages more than 10 times the monthly cost of Hulu Plus. To expect to not only pay 90% less than cable, but also eliminate the advertising, is unrealistic.
Netflix seems to be able to do it.
They're not. Netflix doesn't carry any currently airing season of network or premium television. Netflix is the new Blockbuster, Hulu is the new cable company. Both of those consumer models have to exist for the content production funding model to continue working the way it works.
Netflix isn't going to produce a full prime time lineup of shows every year on $8 per subscriber. Not at the costs networks currently pay for production ($1.5-2 million per episode generally... with hit shows up to $10-15 million per episode). Either the ads stay, or they figure out a way to produce shows of the same quality for much less money.
To give some perspective, more than $60 billion is spent on TV advertising per year in just the US. So if everyone were to just sell subscriptions at Netflix's price, in exchange for new television without ads, they would need to get... every person in the United States (including all the babies) to subscribe. Twice, per person. Just to make up for the ad revenue, ignoring all the lost revenue of people dropping cable subscriptions. Otherwise, the money that currently funds producing these shows just won't exist, so there won't be anything for them to sell you.
There is no future with everyone on an ad-free Netflix for new TV with content that costs as much to produce as today's network television.
Netflix isn't going to produce a full prime time lineup of shows every year on $8 per subscriber. Not at the costs networks currently pay for production ($1.5-2 million per episode generally... with hit shows up to $10-15 million per episode). Either the ads stay, or they figure out a way to produce shows of the same quality for much less money.
To give some perspective, more than $60 billion is spent on TV advertising per year in just the US. So if everyone were to just sell subscriptions at Netflix's price, in exchange for new television without ads, they would need to get... every person in the United States (including all the babies) to subscribe. Twice, per person. Just to make up for the ad revenue, ignoring all the lost revenue of people dropping cable subscriptions. Otherwise, the money that currently funds producing these shows just won't exist, so there won't be anything for them to sell you.
There is no future with everyone on an ad-free Netflix for new TV with content that costs as much to produce as today's network television.
The obvious answer seems to be that the cost of production needs to come down. I wonder how cheaply today's shows could be made if they didn't have the bureaucracy and bloat of the major content publishers behind them?
I think the point of the subscription is actually that you get more content, not less ads.
I watch a lot of past seasons of shows, and frankly, there are so few ads I barely remember the last one I saw.
I watch a lot of past seasons of shows, and frankly, there are so few ads I barely remember the last one I saw.
Very nice. Some thoughts.
The old slideshow was amazingly annoying. You click, it slides by slowly but doesn't reveal the text. You wait some more until the text slowly fades in...nope not interesting. You click again. I would still make the text fade in faster.
The new layout looks very nice. I would make the hover details appear faster as well, only a sliver of time after the play button appears.
The title in the hover-details should be more obviously clickable. Personally, I really don't like having to blindly mouse around until I stumble upon something clickable (even though it seems like the trendy thing to do).
The old slideshow was amazingly annoying. You click, it slides by slowly but doesn't reveal the text. You wait some more until the text slowly fades in...nope not interesting. You click again. I would still make the text fade in faster.
The new layout looks very nice. I would make the hover details appear faster as well, only a sliver of time after the play button appears.
The title in the hover-details should be more obviously clickable. Personally, I really don't like having to blindly mouse around until I stumble upon something clickable (even though it seems like the trendy thing to do).
I rarely use the website to watch Hulu, and really don't get much value out of Hulu Plus on console. I wish they'd put effort into licensing worthwhile content vs.
(Also, Amazon Prime streaming is usually HORRIBLE video quality for me, as well as selection. Netflix is really the only non-pirated service with decent selection and quality, and even it really lacks for selection compared to 2y ago. But I don't want to pay $20/movie for iTunes movies.)
(Also, Amazon Prime streaming is usually HORRIBLE video quality for me, as well as selection. Netflix is really the only non-pirated service with decent selection and quality, and even it really lacks for selection compared to 2y ago. But I don't want to pay $20/movie for iTunes movies.)
Amazon Instant Video is great though... except that you must use a browser to purchase videos. You can then access them in your "Instant Video Library" on console.
I agree, Amazon Instant Video (free with Prime) is wonderful. The best bang for money, two birds one stone, but one thing I have noticed is that they hardly get new contents and yet they still expire the old ones. Its been 4 months and the "Recently Added" section remains untouched for both movies and shows.
Maybe I should buy an instant video to compare quality -- I was assuming they'd be as bad as the amazon prime instant videos.
Quality still horrible, even on paid content. I have a 1080p projector fed from a ps3, xbox, appletv, and for each, I get what looks like SD, and overcompressed at that.
Yellowstone (HD) on a Mac (in Chrome) also appears SD-quality. I'm on 100M comcast business, and everything else works fine, with Amazon reporting it's in HD mode with good performance, so I think it's just crap encoding :(
Yellowstone (HD) on a Mac (in Chrome) also appears SD-quality. I'm on 100M comcast business, and everything else works fine, with Amazon reporting it's in HD mode with good performance, so I think it's just crap encoding :(
The videos still don't fill the whole screen when not maximized like Netflix. :(
Also, HuluWithMe doesn't work in it.
Other than that, I like it a lot.
Also, HuluWithMe doesn't work in it.
Other than that, I like it a lot.
Unfortunately, there are still an annoying number of ads, which is the main reason I got rid of my Plus subscription.
Can anyone comment on whether or not things have improved for subscribers?
Edit: Come to think of it, it was more the fact that so many ads repeated, rather than the number or length of them.
Can anyone comment on whether or not things have improved for subscribers?
Edit: Come to think of it, it was more the fact that so many ads repeated, rather than the number or length of them.
One thing I noticed is that the content doesn't fit the screen as well as it used to.
The graphics are all really big and takes a bit of scrolling to explore the frontpage, which I don't think is an optimal design choice.
However, its a great redesign overall. Reminds me a bit of Netflix.
The graphics are all really big and takes a bit of scrolling to explore the frontpage, which I don't think is an optimal design choice.
However, its a great redesign overall. Reminds me a bit of Netflix.
One of the more interesting things about this new version is its "face match" feature. It allows you to highlight over an actors face and it gives you card of information about them.
http://new.hulu.com/labs/tagging
http://new.hulu.com/labs/tagging
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... aaand it still uses flash.
Not available in Canada :(
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Then on each individual episode page, discussion about the show.
Within the viewers, heat graph timelines available showing what parts people watched the most.
All this is gone.
Instead, animated episode titles in a slide show. Can't find a list of episodes available, seems to not exist except by playing catch-the-moving-tile, a frustrating game with little pay off. Discussions are now in a comments section which seems to be empty on most pages. Pages are slow to load.
No doubt the UI experts that created this monstrosity are the best and the brightest, from the latest schools with the most contemporary techniques. They always are.