As expected, Hulu today finally took the wraps off of the company's new live TV streaming video service. The creatively-named Hulu with Live TV beta provides users with access to fifty or so channels for $40 per month (full channel breakdown here). That $40 a month gets you access to two live streams, as well as access to Hulu's existing catalog of on demand content. That baseline package also nets you 50 hours of DVR recording storage, but you won't be able to skip ads with the baseline $40 per month package.
For that, you'll need to shell out another $15 ($55 total) for Hulu’s "Enhanced Cloud DVR" option, which bumps overall storage to 200 hours of content and lets you skip advertisements.
If you're annoyed by the two-stream concurrent limit, Hulu is also offering users the option of paying $15 per month for what it calls its "Unlimited Screens" option. This option allows you to view as many concurrent streams in the home as your broadband line can handle, though due to broadcast licensing restrictions you'll still be limited to three streams outside the home.
For $20 per month more, Hulu is offering the Enhanced Cloud DVR and Unlimited Screens as one package (so $60 per month all told).
By dubbing this a beta, Hulu pretty clearly hopes to avoid some of the early service complaints seen by the likes of AT&T, whose DirecTV Now service was plagued by issues right out of the gate.
"Hulu can now be a viewer’s primary source of television," Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins said at the service's launch in New York. "It’s a natural extension of our business, and an exciting new chapter for Hulu."
For years Hulu was plagued by a failure to innovate because its owners (Walt Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, Comcast) weren't keen on disrupting the traditional pay TV ecosystem. And while that seems to be at an end, keep in mind Comcast was banned from having full say on Hulu operations as part of an NBC deal merger condition (the hope was this would prevent Comcast from hamstringing a would-be competitor). Those conditions expire next year.
The company's Hulu with Live TV promotion video embedded below has a little more detail.
We all knew they were trying to sabotage themselves but to price this at $40 for the standard package is ridiculous. Someone should have poked there head out the window and looked down the street at Sling and said "Hey guys we need to start the pricing for this package at $20 per mth". Honestly $40 for 50 channels most of which the majority of consumers wont watch, also to have to burn through MY internet cap (comcast) and not to mention I'm riddles with over rated sports channels and multiple unwanted fox stations? no thank you. Most consumers I hope are smarter than this. Unfortunately I hate to say this about competition as its usually good for the economy, but I hope Hulu and this service goes the way of the dodo bird.
Of course they include bunch of sports no one wants. Wheres amc or comedy central? For the price point Vue has 2x the channel selection. Again cable companies dont want to compete to much because they would lose there normal cable subscribers.