jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I tried Hulu last night, the free trial and then $7.95 a month with "limited commercials." I guess "limited" means there is more show than commercials, but barely. Every few minutes, the show was interrupted for between two and four commercials. When I tried to upgrade to no commercials for $12.95 a month, I lost the free trial. After many attempts, I was able to cancel, so now I'm back to Spectrum, Amazon, broadcast, and Netflix. That's plenty for me. Most of the shows on Hulu are available on something else I have.

What do you think of Hulu?

Bultaco Loc: Aiken, SC

Free, $7.95?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks for catching that. It's a free trial and then $7.95/mo.

royden Loc: Decatur, GA

I love Hulu. I pay $11.95 for no commercial. The stuff available there is unbelievable. I hate commercials so much that I would DVR shows on Directtv. Now I see my shows the next day on Hulu which is pretty much what I did with the recorded shows without paying close to $200 per month for 200 channels of which I watch 10 or so.

JohnD3 Loc: Raleigh, NC

Sounds as if we could be on a similar quest, cutting the cable tv (gotta keep the broadband). I'm sick of Spectrum and high monthly cable costs. I have Hulu under consideration.

My main criteria is that the service must be compatible with Roku, would prefer that it provide the three major networks (though I would consider subscribing to CBSNow), and must have some means of recording programs for later viewing. I know several of the new internet services are close and I do have excellent reception of the majors on my antenna (just no way to record missed programming).

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Hi Jerry. I thought about the same as you. We had Dish and dumped it, tried Hulu for about 1 day, kicked it out and went to Spectrum (which had been providing my internet and voice all along (well voice is really the fax as our cell phones are our main phone connection. By adding cable, we were able to reduce our overhead (Dish was horribly expensive)Florida thunderstorms, near miss hurricanes and other normal weather made any dish connection problematic. We constantly lost signal if we got any thing stronger than a normal storm. We constantly got " can not get a signal from the satellite" messages and bad weather is when you REALLY want to be able to get weather messages. We now get EVERYTHING that we had from Dish on Spectrum, including Music Choice etc. and it is costing us $120 per month. We have 100mb internet, all of the channels except the premium channels like HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax. In addition we have a landline phone (our fax but we can make voice calls if necessary. I have their modem, the printer/fax, and a Wi-Fi on an APC UPS. Have one tv, dvr cable box, and second high speed switch on second UPS, and my 2 computers, 3rd high speed switch, WD Cloud on my large APC power backup. All of this would be unrealistic if I had stayed with Dish, Hulu or anything else. And as you probably know, over the air TV is pretty limited.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

TiVo has a unit that can record over-the-air programming. It's gotten too complicated. Because I have TiVo, I need a separate box and special card. Every few weeks, they stop working, and I have to unplug everything and go through a sequential restart procedure. Most of what I watch is on either TiVo or Netscape/Amazon, but I also like some network shows.

JohnD3 Loc: Raleigh, NC

I am familiar with TiVo, read many reviews on it; decided that it was far more complicated than what I wanted. Just can't understand why we can't have the old recorders we had for years, all they should need to do would be to upgrade the turner to a digital.

At any rate it appears that more and more of the services (ie Sling, DirectTV, etc.) are looking into providing recording capability.

Hopefully soon.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

We have it , no Netflix, watch it enough to justify the cost, not a lot but enough, but we are not usually big tv watchers except at night when we are winding down, most movies being made now are not our taste.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

I signed up for a few months, but like you, thought that "no commercials" might actually mean "no commercials". There are so many services now that the good viewing is spread out so thinly that it makes no sense to give everyone $10 or more a month. Even Amazon video now requires you to sign up for Showtime (ANOTHER monthly fee) to access a lot of their content!

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I manged to cancel the $7.95 membership, and I got an email saying it was cancelled, and my free trial would expire at the end of the month. When I tried to sign on last night, I had no free trial, so I signed up for the $11.95 no-commercial plan. I was surprised to see that the free trial is only one week for this plan. Since I'm already paying for cable, Netflix, TiVo, and Amazon, I'm going to let Hulu go. I could probably spend $1,000 a month if I signed up for all the video services that are available. CBS has a monthly fee for CBS Live - which isn't even live - to watch what is available for free on TV!

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

I don't like it. I stick with netflix but I'm considering just going to "MuviBox" which forgoes all subscription models. All movies, All TV all for $350.00 one time price.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I like the Pay Once plans. I must have been one of the last people to get a lifetime subscription to XM. Unfortunately, the radio is failing, and I already used up my one and only transfer.

ggttc Loc: TN

This is going to seem like blasphemy to most of you...but I have the commercial version of hulu and love it. The commercials give you time to nuke more butter for the popcorn, check on the meatloaf and check on the bird feeders in the backyard etc. The breaks are at longest 2 minutes. Compared to network tv where a 60 minute show is actually just 39 to 41 minutes of actual show its a relief.

I also think the content is superior to Netflix and Amazon.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

But there are so many commercial breaks in each show! I do like having the count in the upper left, "Ads: 2 of 4."