Hulu raising prices again!

[SoCalNative]

on their live TV_no ads service. Just got an email from them that the cost will rise on December 18th from $50.99 a month to $60.99 a month.

Thanks Disney!

"We’re reaching out to let you know that the price of your Hulu (No Ads) + Live TV plan will increase from $50.99/month to $60.99/month on Wednesday, December 18, 2019.

This price change allows us to continue delivering the best live and on-demand TV experience for you. In addition to ongoing product enhancements, Hulu (No Ads) + Live TV will continue to include the largest streaming library with more than 85,000 episodes of TV, movies, and award-winning Hulu Originals."

[louis-t]

1. "This price change allows us to continue delivering.."

Which means "nice tv plan, it would be a shame if something happened to it."

[Born Free]

14. close to Comcast

Just got an add for Infinity for $79 for their triple play and a free dvr. We use OTA and some free Roku channels. I think Philo TV for $20.00 a month is probably the one we would get.

[SoCalNative]

28. It's a good deal

and they have most of the channels that I watch, but they don't offer network/local channels. And frankly if I'm paying for a streaming service I don't like to have to keep switching back and forth from antenna to Roku or AppleTV.

[beachbumbob]

2. I pay 6.99 and mute the TV when ads play

Hulu is the least used streaming service I use basically when OTA programs do not record right on my Tablo from weather conditions

[exboyfil]

4. He has the live TV package which is like cable

With the streaming library added
I have your plan for $1/mo going away this month. I honestly have not found that much. Got through The Terror and Orville recently. I am letting mine drop and concentrating on My Great Courses and Amazon Prime which has more older movies and better original content.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

3. How much are your streaming subscriptions costing you?

Select the streaming services, plans and add-ons that you’re planning to pay for, and our calculator totals up the cost per month, over your lifetime — and the “true” cost if you factor in the opportunity cost of not investing that money.

The 50-year, lifetime total factors in a projected inflation rate of 2% annually.

link to calculator
https://graphics.wsj.com/marketwatch/streaming-services-calculator/

[hunter]

7. We spend $8.99 for Netflix and rent DVDs at Redbox.

Wall Street Journal says that's a lifetime cost of $9,124 for Netflix.

My wife and I have no broadcast, satellite, or cable television.

We'd have the internet anyways.

If Murdoch's News Corporation, owner of the Wall Street Journal, wants me to watch "free" television supported by commercials it's not going to happen.

My wife and I haven't watched any traditional television for over a decade.

When I'm exposed to traditional television in waiting rooms, hotel breakfast rooms, etc., I find it intolerable.

[Silver1]

16. Same with us.

We have the internet, Netflix, and use Hulu "on demand". If Hulu has something we want to see we join the service for a few months and then shut the account off when we're done.

We pay for movies individually when we want to watch one.

I completely agree with you about traditional TV and it's been great to get away from it!

[ecstatic]

38. Yikes! Losing 101k, and that doesn't even include my

extra costs for being on the gigabit Internet plan. I'm going to sleep on this information and reassess in the morning.

[helpisontheway]

5. Disney is only $6.99 a month..? What does that have to do with Hulu price increase?nt

[SoCalNative]

8. Disney is now the full owner

of Hulu. They bought out the only other partner some months back.

[helpisontheway]

10. Oh I did not know that. Nt

[onenote]

45. Disney isn't the only owner, but they do have complete control

Comcast/NBCU still has a 33 percent ownership interest, but has agreed to cede operational control fully to Disney. Over the next few years, Disney will buy out Comcast's ownership share. In return, NBCU programming no longer will be available exclusively on Hulu and, after the buy out is complete, NBCU can decide not to offer its programming on Hulu at all.

[ok_cpu]

6. Reminds me of when Netflix started penalizing their mail customers

Maybe Hulu doesn't want to be in the live business.

At $61 bucks, we may go back to cable.

[roamer65]

9. Dish's flex pack is cheaper.

Last edited Fri Nov 15, 2019, 05:02 PM - Edit history (1)

$43 a month and I get a DVR along with it.

[SoCalNative]

13. It's 46.99 when I look it up for my area

and doesn't contain all of the channels that I would watch for that cost, so I would have to spend more to add packs to get all of the channels that I watch.

[roamer65]

17. ATT Watch TV was $15, but...

I have read they have stopped taking subscribers and will soon shut it down.
It has no sports nor Faux Snooze.

[SoCalNative]

11. From article in LA Times

"It’s hardly a surprise that Hulu would raise prices as programming costs increase, particularly in live sports, which is key to the appeal of Hulu’s live TV bundle."

And that has ALWAYS been my beef with cable, satellite and now this. I don't give a rat's ass about sports of any kind and wish that SOME live streaming service would offer a package devoid of any sports. I don't need my costs continually rising because of something that I never watch and couldn't care less about.

Link to article if anyone wants to read in full:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2019-11-15/hulu-raises-price-for-live-tv

[roamer65]

12. Sports are optional in my Dish package...

and the best part is no Faux Snooze!

[Blue_true]

20. There are services that offer only old and original content movies,

why not just subscribe to one of those? Although my guess is once those movie only companies get a popular and highly used product, prices will go up.

[csziggy]

34. When streaming there are free channels that offer movies and some TV shows

With my Roku stick I get for free:
Roku Channel
Vudu
Tubi
Sony Crackle
Comet, SyFlix & Pluto (pretty much identical)
FictionFlix
Tales of Tomorrow
Nasa

They don't carry the classic cable channels, but if all I want to watch are old series and movies, they are fine - with some commercials.

[DeminPennswoods]

21. You can get sports free Comcast packages, too

nt

[Luciferous]

15. I paid less than that when I had cable.

[Blue_true]

18. I remember when Cable was something like $21 per month, for ALL channels.

Then the cable companies started merging until there were only three or four left. During the whole time prices kept creeping up. Then the remaining cable companies started the basic cable plus "tier" plan nonsense to squeeze more money out of customers. Today, to get all channels minus movies, a person pays close to $160-$200 per month.

Some people here on DU predicted that services like Hulu would become pricey. They are following the cable route, offer an enticing service at a good price, merge with rivals to remove competition, get bought out by a big media company, constantly raise prices to the customer during the whole time, just give some flimsy assed reason to justify the price increases. Soon they will go to some form of tier BS, where there will be "basic" Hulu that offers virtually nothing but a customer need to buy it to get "packages" that offer something that may be worth watching. The cheapest packages will be shit packages that offer little more than "basic" Hulu, but adding one of those will set a customer back another $20-$30. To get something that is marginally worth watching, a customer will need to pay an extra $50-$60 over "basic" Hulu. Welcome to the world of how entertainment companies are run. Even old music is being bought up, once music starts to regularly get played online, say like 60s era Simon and Garfunkle, media aggregators post rights notifications and pull everything offline, the only way to access it is to pay them an access fee that goes up the more popular a download is.

[roamer65]

19. Just wait till broadcast TV starts up ATSC 3.0

This newer rendition of the over the air broadcast TV standard contains a conditional access system. That means most of what they broadcast can be made pay TV. All you will probably have for free is a local news and weather channel.

Stations will be testing it soon. They will probably use it to “reclaim” lost retransmission revenue from declining cable subscriptions.

[Blue_true]

22. Someone recently said to me that everything is a racket to pull more money out of

people's pockets. I don't fully agree with that cynical look, but in the case of broadcast media, it is right on.

[roamer65]

23. +1000

[Kaleva]

24. I pay $11.99 a month for Hulu and I'm quite happy with what I get for that.

[ok_cpu]

27. Do you get on demand episodes of the current network shows?

Or is that live only?

[Kaleva]

32. No and don't need to either.

There are so many older shows, some already off the air, to watch that my wife and I really don't need to spend extra on episodes of current shows.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

25. Well the public

Funded cable,fiber optics and the internet. All Tv should be free. Like it was years ago.After all it was the public funding of research and all other things to make those things exist.

Taxpayers paid for it all to be built. Now the corporatists
Exploit it all for personal gain.
The government made it happen,not CEOs or commercials.

The net,fiber optic or cable has become a tool of rich people getting richer by claiming they own it.
The people of America built it by funding it via taxes which the middle class paid for most of it .It is being exploited by CEOs of corporations, and it is wrong.

[TeamPooka]

26. Feels like Disney is trying to redirect Hulu customers to its new Disney+ streaming service

[SoCalNative]

29. Maybe

but I don't want only Disney content. They don't offer live TV streaming on Disney+.

[exboyfil]

30. Actually supplements each other

That is why Disney is packaging them together (at least the on demand stuff). It kind of makes sense to have the more adult oriented programming on a non-Disney branded platform. The combo package with the useless ESPN+ (not ESPN) is probably a better deal than Netflix unless Netflix really starts upping their game.

For now I am already out of Netflix. Hulu at $1/mo. ends this month and I will cancel it. After the the Marvel shows get going, I will sign up for the combo package to binge them and any new Hulu stuff that comes up.

[JCMach1]

33. No, they are actually bundling them...

[forgotmylogin]

31. May as well have cable.

[Tarc]

35. It makes zero sense. If more platforms enter the market, the prices should drop

or at least remain steady, as they compete for your viewership.

[radius777]

36. Streaming is a false solution to problem of media/tech monopolies.

Streaming services only present the illusion of freedom and choice, but the cable companies still own the means of transmission (cable lines, satellites, etc), and most media and tech is owned and controlled by a few monopolies.

Another problem is local stations (which you can get free over the air) actually charge cable companies to carry them, which has raised costs, in some cases dramatically.

Cable should be free (or very cheap, just for the equipment service) as most stations are advertiser supported, and they (imo) would make more money if they could rely on the entire public as an audience, instead of a narrow set of subscribers.

If I was a politician I would run on free cable, and would probably win in a landslide lol, as the issue cuts across party lines.

[ecstatic]

37. Wow! I've been thinking about trying them but they were missing

several of my favorite channels. I can't seem to find the perfect all in one solution. Right now, fuboTV seems to be the closest, although they're missing ABC (which I have access to through other means, but still).

[DFW]

39. Greetings from the Stone Age

I barely know what y'all are talking about. I live and work in Europe most of the year. We have traditional German TV here, and a few cable channels are included in the service, but we have no on-demand anything, and wouldn't have the time for them if we did. I have no clue what Hulu or any of that other stuff is. Maybe when I retire, but maybe not even then, since I tend to be like my dad, who had such fun at his job that he only retired about a week before cancer killed him.

[JonLP24]

43. It is like cable without the annual contract

I have sling blue+orange+sports which costs me $50 a month. I also pay $28 per month for the NBA League Pass.

[DFW]

44. I don't have the slightest idea what all that means

I have been living here in Germany for quite a few years.

[LeftInTX]

46. It is television that is transmitted over the internet as opposed to antenna or cable

In the US cable became popular due to poor antenna transmission quality. Cable started adding more and more channels, but started going up in price, so internet TV started catching on. (Hulu Live is a form of internet television)

[DFW]

48. Ah, OK, I see

There may be stuff like that here in the meantime. European kids have their noses glued to their cell phones as much as American kids do now. But I still have my day job, so I have neither the time nor the interest.

E.G.--while in Belgium today, I got a call from my office in the Netherlands that I ABSOLUTELY HAD to see them (near Utrecht) tomorrow afternoon. But it was too late to blow off my meeting in Switzerland tomorrow morning, so as soon as it's done (6:50 flight down there from Düsseldorf, 9:00 meeting), I have to run back to the Zürich airport, fly to Amsterdam, get picked up, race to Utrecht, be done by 6 PM so I can race to the Utrecht train station for the 7:00 PM train back to Düsseldorf. I should be home at 10:00 PM so I can get up at 4:30 in order to be at my early Wednesday appointments in Paris.

TV? Yeah, I remember what it is. Vaguely.

[JCMach1]

40. Kicking Hulu Live to Curb, taking the Disney + Bundle

and Adding LoCast for local channels

I will use the Mobdro App for MSNBC and ESPN (the regular version)

No one ever said Cord Cutting was easy!

[yortsed snacilbuper]

41. Exclusive Offer: Get Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ for only $12.99/month

https://www.disneyplus.com/sign-up/?type=bundle&cid=Hulu-Hulu-Hulu-Email-NA-Bundle-US-DisneyPlus-DisneyPlus-EN-EmailBody-CAN-NA&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=BM_EML_PremiumAddOns_EFT_na_Q1_2020_201911_DisneyPlusBundle_Reacq-Cancelled&plus_app=ReCAN&cmc=Special%20Offer&cmp=12284&jobid=4175027&user_id=102340728

[SoCalNative]

42. Yes, but that's ONLY for regular Hulu

not the Live TV service.

[aikoaiko]

47. I binged the Handmaiden's Tale and punched out.

I'll reup for a month after the next season is ready for another binge.

[Revanchist]

49. I use Hulu ad free

I really don't care about live tv since I spent so many years on the night shift I've gotten used to watching tv without ads. From vcr to Tivo to Hulu the day after I'm fine with waiting on a show.