Hulu Live must have some sort of secret sauce,
because while everyone else is kinda losing steam,
they're losing subscribers, they're slowing down,
Hulu Live is picking up like crazy.
They picked up a ton of subscribers last year
and we're gonna find out why,
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Hulu With Live TV is simply a live TV streaming service
much like Sling TV, YouTube TV, DirecTV Now,
those kinds of things, so you can watch
live TV with your internet connection.
Now that's great, but why is it, then,
that, say, Sling TV has slowed down
in its growth quite a bit?
They only gained 50000 subscribers at the end of last year.
DirecTV, at the same time,
lost a quarter million subscribers,
so why is it that Hulu With Live TV is gaining,
at the same time, a half million subscribers?
Personally, I think the explanation is pretty simple,
and we're going to get into that,
but we're also going to do a deep dive
on the cost of it, all the channels that you get,
that sort of thing, so we are going to look
at the whole picture and why it is
that Hulu TV is making such big gains.
Let's get started.
There's a lot to applaud when it comes to Hulu Live,
and by the way, I am just gonna call it Hulu Live,
I know technically it's Hulu With Live TV
and that is the better name for it
but we'll get to that in just a moment,
but for now, it's Hulu Live.
Anyway, there's a lot of nice stuff about it,
for instance, you can watch it
on just about any device you can imagine.
I even watch it on my sweet Nintendo Switch,
I mean, you can watch it on pretty much anything,
so it's great that way, but I'm gonna run through
a few of the reasons why I think
Hulu With Live TV, Hulu Live,
has their kinda recipe dialed in,
why it's so attractive to so many people.
However, it's not all sunshine and roses, unfortunately.
There are other things to be aware of,
it's not just the pros.
I would put some of these things
I'm going to talk about on the cons side.
However, a lot of them aren't
as big a deal to a lot of people,
they're just things that you want to be aware of,
you don't wanna be taken by surprise.
For instance, yes, I can watch it
on a lot of different devices, like my Nintendo Switch,
but if I want to watch it simultaneously
on a lot of different devices,
I can only do two devices at once.
If I want to do up to five, like if I have a whole family
who's wanting to watch Hulu Live,
then I'm going to need to pay an extra 15 bucks a month,
and we'll come back to that.
The first thing that we'll look at is channel count.
You get a lot of bang for your buck here,
67 nationwide channels for your 45 dollar package,
that is quite a bit of value as far as channel per dollar.
You also get local channels, now,
I can't factor those in, because that's gonna depend a lot
on your geography and what your market allows
as far as what's available on Hulu TV,
so a lot of channels, that's a great thing.
However, 67 channels is good as far as a cost-per-channel
but you are missing some key ones.
You don't get any Viacom channels,
so MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, those are out,
and there's another big one which,
really, they ought to add, AMC,
and which, I'm sorry, AMC should stand for A Magic Channel.
- Takes us to a place where we ache to go again.
- Now, next up is live sports.
Hulu has been doing a big push recently
marketing their live sports capabilities.
They have built a really great interface
that allows you to follow individual teams,
different sports, and it kinda lets you keep track
of everything that you want to keep track of,
whether it's college football or NBA
or whatever the case may be,
it's a great interface that allows you to do that.
However, the interface may be great,
and they do have live sports,
but just be aware that you're not getting
any more live sports than you would anywhere else.
They're just talking about ESPN, ESPN2, Fox Sports,
all that kinda thing, so, yes,
they do have live sports but you're not getting more
than you would otherwise, it's just that interface.
Next up is content curation, this is another big one.
Now, if you're not familiar with exactly what this means,
this is all those things, you see those categories,
it's like, recommended for you,
basically Hulu does a really great job
at recommending new TV shows and movies for you,
so they've built that into Hulu Live as well.
It's fantastic, however, content curation may be great
until such time as it pushes the content
that you actually want to watch down out of your queue,
so if you're working through season three
of your favorite one-hour drama
and you've been doing that for a few weeks,
suddenly Hulu comes in and kind of buries it
under some other recommendations,
so the recommendations may or may not be good,
but frankly, I don't want them shoving my content
out of the way to make those recommendations.
50 hours of DVR included, now,
this is something that's becoming more widespread
across the industry, included DVR,
so maybe it doesn't sound that special,
but at least it's there, they're not lagging behind anybody.
50 hours of DVR included is a good value.
However, free DVR is great, but 50 hours
is just not that much.
We harp on this with Sling TV all the time,
50 hours will fill up really quickly,
so you can pay extra, 15 bucks a month,
and you'll get 200 hours of DVR content.
But wait, there's more, with that $15
you also get the ability to pause
and fast-forward your DVR'd content.
But wait, you say!
You have to pay to do that?
Yes, you do, the free version of the DVR
does not let you fast-forward through your commercials.
Ultimately, what it comes down to,
I think, is this secret sauce,
and that is the value added by Hulu itself.
I mentioned earlier that it's not actually called Hulu Live,
it's called Hulu With Live TV,
and this is a great name because it describes
exactly what you're getting.
It's not just live TV like you would get
with Sling TV, DirecTV Now, PlayStation View,
all of those have that, but Hulu With Live TV
has Hulu built in, so you get the on-demand side of things
and the live TV side of things.
It's a great value, however, it's important to know
that you're getting the limited commercials option
for the Hulu on-demand content.
There is a no-commercials option,
but it's gonna be an additional
four bucks a month to get that.
Now, that's not that much,
but let's say you want the decent DVR,
and let's say you want the unlimited streams
for your family to watch as well.
Suddenly you're adding 15 each for those,
you're looking at almost 80 dollars for your Hulu package.
Now, if you cut the cord to save some money,
you can see how this might be a bit of a problem.
So ultimately, while, yes, there are
some downsides to Hulu With Live TV,
it's just a whole lot of value packed into that $45,
so I can see why there are so many people
fleeing the other services and moving to this one.
But let me know if you're one of them.
Hit the comments below, if you already use Hulu Live,
tell me what you like or dislike about it,
if you're thinking about it,
if you're thinking about switching over
then let me know why and whether this video
helped you make your decision at all.
In the meantime, hit that subscribe button
because we're gonna be back on Friday
with a livestream explaining more
about that TCL Roku TV giveaway
that I mentioned earlier in the video,
and you can check that out in the meantime
with our latest video, the Marvel one.
And of course, if you wanna know more
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so you can check out that playlist as well.
Thanks for watching, guys, we'll see you next time.
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