Customer Reviews

Hulu Plus

The Hulu Plus app is a well-designed, easy to navigate application that allows you to stream movies/TV shows. The app is well known for allowing streaming of current TV episodes shortly after they air on television. It is also popular with film fans because of it's extensive collection of classic movies from the Criterion Collection.

First of all, to use the app you'll need to be a member of Hulu Plus ($7.99 per month). You cannot use this app unless you have a Hulu Plus account. Now, once you download/start the app, it will ask you to link your streaming device (such as Amazon Fire TV, etc) with your Hulu account. This will verify that your are a Hulu Plus member, and it will also allow you to access your video queue and personal settings. You only have to log in the first time, after that the app saves your info.

Navigation is easy, and video quality and load times are reasonable. Hulu works on an ad-supported model, so in many cases you will have to watch a short advertisement prior to the start of your video.

How does Hulu Plus compare to Netflix? Well, I would say that Netflix has a slight advantage due to its lack of ad content as well as it's more user-friendly layout. But one thing to note is that there is not much overlap between the content available on Netflix and that which is available on Hulu Plus - so if you watch a lot of TV and movies, then you might consider purchasing both subscriptions because each has it's own variety of exclusive content.

This review doesn't compare the already well known Hulu-Plus service to the Netflix service. Instead it should let you know some differences between these two brand new APPs written for FireTV that might help a few people know more about both. You only get one week to check out HULU vs NETFLIX giving you 4 times longer for the trial. To sign up without a computer, using nothing but your click-by-click TV remote took me hundreds of taps for my personal information because the Hulu doesn't use a standard on-screen QWERTY keyboard like the Netflix signup does. And on top of that, to read the Terms-of-Service page for April 2013 -- that you must agree to -- actually takes 150 clicks (give or take five) with the handheld remote just to reach the end! Another big difference between the two apps ... this new Hulu+ app forces you to change your Fire TV box's previous settings for in-App purchases, while Netflix does not. This is because you *must* use the same credit card with Hulu as Amazon has previously stored for you, again, unlike the Netflix requirements. While most of these signup differences don't really matter to my own use of the service, this review was done to provide information that might be useful to some people who are not automatically going to subscribe to both streaming services. Hope some of this helps a few people!

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely LOVE Hulu as a service. I cut the cable cord 3 years ago, and haven't looked back. Even as a paying customer, I've saved me a ton of money when you compare $7.99 a month for Hulu Plus to having an HD cable subscription with DVR. I also am really enjoying the Fire TV so far, and the voice search DOES give you results for Hulu Plus (but only for shows that are also available on Prime Video).

So why only 2 stars? Well...

As another reviewer stated, the video freezes ALL the time on the Fire TV app. The audio keeps on playing fine, but the video either gets stuck on a frame or just a black screen with the network (Fox, CBS, ABC, etc.) logo in the corner after coming back from the ads. Sometimes the video resumes if I just wait it out for a while, but most of the time I have to restart the app. And let me reiterate that this doesn't just happen every now and then. It happens ALL the time. Not a great experience, to say the least.

Also, why is the Hulu Plus app for Kindle Fire so much better than the Fire TV app? Why are they even different at all? I know the 2 examples I share below might not sound like a big deal, but they are so fundamental to the user experience, I don't know why Hulu (or Amazon, I don't really know who to blame) wouldn't make it consistent across both Amazon devices.

1. On the Kindle Fire app, an icon will appear over the video thumbnail in the Shows You Watch section if there are any new episodes. SO useful! The Fire TV app, however, has no such icons. You have to click through each of your shows to see if there are any episodes that you haven't watched yet. Which brings me to my second point...

2. On the Kindle Fire app, it lists the episodes for each show in reverse chronological (newest-to-oldest) order. As soon as you click through to each of your shows, you land on the most recent episode right away. That, along, with the new episode icons mentioned above make the experience on the Kindle Fire so natural, so easy, and so enjoyable. On the Fire TV, however, not only can you not tell from the main menu if there are any new episodes, but the episodes are listed in chronological order (oldest-to-newest), so you have to scroll all the way to the end to see if there are any new episodes.

I know, I know. First world problems, right? Well when there are so many entertainment options out there, annoyances like this have really limited my enthusiasm for using the service. And it's not like I'm asking them to reinvent the wheel here. The Hulu Plus app for Kindle Fire is great, but I'd much rather watch TV on my TV (go figure), so why can't the Fire TV app just get brought up to speed with the Kindle Fire app?

Here's to hoping for an update, and soon.

I'm going to compare the pros and cons of Hulu Plus to Netflix, since that is something that most people interested in video streaming have experience with.

Pros:
Access to current TV shows in almost real time. For most shows there is a delay of less than 24 hours between it appearing on TV and being available to stream on Hulu. Netflix offers a great variety of shows, but they tend to lag by a season or so. Basically the same release schedule as the DVD sets.

A large back-catalog. Unlike the free version of Hulu, you can view every season of most shows.

The UI is responsive and easy to navigate. Netflix is a little snappier and much more intuitive, but Hulu Plus does well overall.

Cons:
Advertisements. You are going to pay the same monthly price as Netflix, but you will have to sit through several minutes of unskippable advertisements per episode. I assume the extra revenue generated for Hulu goes towards the increased licensing costs for getting near-real-time TV releases.

While the UI is responsive, it could be presented in a much more user-friendly fashion. Pulling episode information up prior to playing an episode on the Amazon Fire TV is not intuitive at all. In addition to this, navigating between seasons and episodes is far easier and faster in Netflix compared to Hulu Plus.

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Overall I think it is important to see Hulu Plus not as a competitor to Netflix, but as an enhancement. It will fill in the gaps that plague Netlix in the current season department. If you enjoy television and do not want to wait for a season to end before viewing it then I would definitely recommend Hulu Plus. Between this and Netflix cord cutting is extremely viable for most people.

When I'm watching a TV show on my Amazon Fire TV it almost always goes to a black screen after playing a commercial. It plays the sound just fine but it's just a black screen. It also constantly freezes. My internet speed is over 20Mbps so there should be no problems with the connection. I can stream using HBOGO and netflix just fine. This is starting to get annoying and really needs to be fixed.

For a service that requires paying a fee to utilize, the stream freezing is a supreme nuisance. I'd expect this from a new service, Hulu has been around for a bit and the fact that the only way it recommends to fix my freeze issue is to restart my FireTV and then Router.
I got a better idea, find a way to bring your service to a standard that warrants being charged for it. This app can be great but if the company is too complacent in making its service more robust. If your site company has no pride just sell off your rights and content o Amazon so I can utilize the content from your site on a streaming service that doesn't suck.
Get your priorities right you have a lot of content but you poorly implement. Fix it properly and I will update my rating until then. The rating sticks.

Like many of the other reviewers, I also had numerous playback issues. The video would freeze on one frame while the audio continued on. Sometimes while trying to rewind and fast forward to get it unstuck, it would play the audio with a black screen. None of my other amazon Fire TV apps give me this problem. It was annoying enough for me to cancel my hulu plus subscription. If they can get it functional on Amazon Fire TV, I will restart my hulu plus subscription.

Hulu plus is unable to play any show in Amazon TV. Each time I click on the show, it starts playing an ad. Immediately after ad, the screen goes blank and then the app returns to home screen. I have tried clearing the data/cache, even uninstalling/reinstalling app multiple times. Nothing has fixed the issue. In parallel, I tried Hulu plus on roku and that appears to work fine. So, it appears that something is broken with hulu on amazon TV.

I installed Hulu on my Fire TV as soon as I received it. It installed quickly and promptly asked me for my email and password (you must have a Hulu Plus account for this app to work - they cost about $8 per month).

I typed in my username/password and it quickly logged me in and pulled up all of my account information (like my favorite shows, and playlists, etc.

The interface was easy to navigate and very similar to that of the Roku. Shows loaded quickly, were of excellent quality, and had options such as displaying captions.

A good version of this app for the Fire TV!

At one time, Hulu would have been 5 PLUS stars.. but now, with FireTV, I give it a 2 and that is almost too much. I wrote on their Facebook page numerous times, to have them tell me that I should check the internet speed, to which I did : Ping: 2ms, Download : 391.66 mbps, Upload: 558.43 mbps, and they told me that was great. So then they tell me to uninstall the app, remove the app, and restart the modem and FireTV, well DUH. I have done this so many times, it's unplugged and restarting more than it's on.

I had NO issues with Hulu on my Roku, just replaced with the FireTV because it was time for a new player. However, I have noticed that even with the Roku player (plugged mine back in to test, and others have had issues) that it does the same exact thing. So with going back n forth for maybe 3 emails, Hulu sends a email, please rate the service you received in fixing your issue!.. WHAT????!!! The issue is NOT fixed.. so another Post on Facebook, and well it's been a few more days almost a week since I've heard anything, something would be better than nothing.. but they choose to do.... NOTHING.

I'm sick of seeing, the same options over and over, they did give me 1 month credit, since this has been going on for 2 months now, but, what good is that if I can't watch the shows? I am very close to cancelling my subscription, because they don't seem to care anything about their clients and what everyone is experiencing, on not only the FireTV but other things as well.

If they decide to fix this, then I will up the star rating, but for now, I'm DISAPPOINTED, and would suggest that people not start with this company, go to Netflix.