My lovely and talented wife wanted to watch a few episodes of “The Thick of It” the other night and we were constantly irritated by the commercials and the need to select our poison - “which ad is more relevant to you: Depends Adult Diapers or Hampton Inn?”
Perhaps it was the timer telling us how much time was left in that particular commercial block*, perhaps it was the countdown saying “Ads: 1/3”, “Ads: 2/3”, etc, and it was definitely part and parcel that the commercials didn’t come at the standard times that one grows used to in watching American TV… but damn - it seemed as if there were more commercials on Hulu than there were on regular TV.
We were also irritated as hell by the fact that the “Press ESC to close full screen” prompt kept staying on the screen until we did a total refresh of the browser. WTF? Research showed that this isn’t an unknown problem with Flash players, but I have only had it happen on Hulu.
Note that this is our first experience with Hulu, so maybe it takes some getting used to… but the overall experience was, at best, meh and mostly just frustrating. It definitely put us off the service to the point that if something was only available on Hulu… well, perhaps we can find something else to watch.
So… is this common with Hulu, the constant commercials and the “press Esc” message not disappearing? What are your experiences with Hulu?
I mostly use my iPad. On full screen all that stuff disappears. The ads are a minor annoyance. I much prefer Hulu to Netflix. I don’t watch a ton of movies and they seem to have more TV shows I like.
Have you tried Crackle.com? It has a limited selection, but it’s totally free.
I’ve dealt with the ESC problem too. It seems to only be a problem when you’re going from one show to the next. I have since worked it into my routine that whenever I’m finished with one show, before going to the next, I’ll click on another non Hulu link in my favs bar and then quickly back to Hulu.
The silver lining in this cloud is I see this as the perfect time to check for any updates on the Dope.
Also, I’m not so annoyed with the commercials as I have a bladder the size of a thimble which makes commercial breaks a perfect time to go pee.
I also love it when they offer the Black Jack game. (online casino ad) If you win, no commercial breaks!
Me, too. What I hate are the same damn commercials, over and over. And never click the “was this relevant to you” button because “yes” means it goes on even heavier rotation and “no” means absolutely nothing. AND, as a Hulu Plus member, you would think it knows enough about me, if only my age and masculine name, to not try to sell me feminine sanitation products. I never needed them and menopause would have set in years ago.
They would be more financially successful if their ad system worked better.
Firefox+Adblock+noscript= no ads
You just get a black screen for the duration of the ads with a “please disable ad blockers” line of text
To which I say… NO!
Hulu’s insistence on serving ads to their PAYING subscribers is why I have not signed up for Plus, I’m not paying them money so they can shove ads at me.
I could understand serving ads to users of the free limited service, but not paying subscribers, for all their flaws, at least Netflix is ad free
I don’t recall what I was watching or where. Pretty sure it was something on Hulu that isn’t reserved for Hulu+ members, but they wouldn’t play with AdBlock enabled.
I have had all the mentioned problems with the addition of these; I frequently have the audio start without the video then a second audio starts that is synced with the video, once I even had 3 audio tracks running. The only way to fis it is to close the tab, sometimes the whole browser.
Then I get a problem where I try to go back and it keeps going back to the same spot then at about the third attempt it jumps forward, usually to a commercial section that I can’t skip and go back so I have to wait for the commercials.
I’ve also had a problem where the playback screen ends up a bunch of weird colors. I figured that one is probably more due to my old computer.
