If you want the ad free bundle through Hulu you have to take their $24.99 plan that includes ESPN+.
If you go through Disney Plus you can get a $19.99 ad free bundle of just the two but if you have any services through Hulu you cannot go this route. Or remove those services from Hulu and buy them separately. For example, I have Max through Hulu. I would need to cancel the Hulu add on for Max, get Max directly, quit Hulu and then buy the $19 bundle through Disney Plus. And then take a nap. But the changes would save me $11/month.
We did the Disney/Hulu Commercial free deal for 1 month about a month ago.
Max we have on some special super discount via our ATT phone plan. I think that is only $6 per month, but the offer is not available any longer and if we dropped it, it would be gone forever. If Max wasn’t so cheap, I would drop it and catch highlights of John Oliver on Youtube.
Right now the combined Disney/Hulu App is still in Beta, buggy and the search is crappy, the good news is I found a way to sign into the Hulu app to use it separately. That worked much better, especially for searches.
This is good to know if I ever take the plunge into Disney+.
I’ve mostly signed up for each streaming service independently of the others, but now I’m noticing there’s a lot of bundling going on. We’re just going back to the old cable model, only with streaming, aren’t we?
Yes, plus many of the players are actually merging.
Showtime is part of Paramount and the whole mess is for sale or merger. They’re still trying to find the right deal.
I expect Starz to folding into another Streamer sometime.
Prime has deals with a lot of streamers and if you keep checking you’ll find deals like Starz for up to 3 month for only a $1.99 per month or Crunchy Roll for 2 months (This one was at Christmas) and some Max deals pop up.
They also have bundling plans for Acorn and Britbox, but the discount is small.
That stands to reason; the landscape felt way too fragmented to offer enough value to most customers for many streaming services. I mean there are about a dozen prominent streaming services, but most people sign up for 3-5 and that’s somewhat dependent on whether they already have Amazon Prime or not.
A round of consolidations seems almost inevitable in light of that. Some are just convenient - the Hulu/Disney+ consolidation just makes sense, although I’m a bit surprised there’s no Fox/ABC branding involved there, since Disney owns it all.
I have a feeling PBS is going to be the one that gets it in the neck; their streaming is kind of terrible, even if you do subscribe to their service, and local affiliates may or may not be on things like the local Hulu streaming or YouTube Tv.
You should call AT&T and ask them if there was a way to lock in Max for free. I’ve gotten it for free for I think the last 2 years for having AT&T phone and internet, so it’s definitely an option. Get the right support person on the phone and they’ll hook you up.
I’ve been a Disney+ subscriber for a long time. A year or two ago I ditched cable, and decided to go with Hulu for my local channels because of the bundle. Their customer service talked me through creating the combined account, and all my history from Disney+ was maintained even though I technically cancelled the account. I was actually pretty impressed.