Hulu Plus

Signed up for Hulu Plus.  The one-week free trial anyway.  But I'm going to continue because I bought a gift card (at a discount) on eBay.  Plus I'll get monthly subscriptions from Bing Rewards (I signed up for that too).

First thing.  Hulu Plus doesn't have all the shows the Hulu does (oddly).  That's because they don't have the rights to show some shows on your TV or mobile devices.  Just on your comptuer.  So no Three Stooges.  Well, they have the three public domain episodes if you look hard enough.  And there's always Crackle for some more (so why can Crackle show The Three Stooges on TV, but Hulu Plus?).  Also no HGTV episodes either.  Or CNBC Titans, to name just a few.

Some of the newer shows have captions.  Mostly the current ones.  But not that many of the older shows.  None on Dog Whisperer.  None on Bob Newhart Show.  And those are two of the main shows I want to watch on Hulu.

What's especially disappointing is that I know that captions are available for many/most of these shows.  For example, The Dick Van Dyke Show has captions on Netflix, but not on Hulu Plus.  Dog Whisperer too, though they have only a limited number of episodes on Netflix.  Netflix does a much better job supporting captions.

Captions are a little strange.  On my Roku HD, they apparently originate from Hulu.  Are so are yellow.  But on the Apple TV, they use the Apple TV captions.  (Same thing with Netflix.  I think the Roku 3 might be like the Apple TV and use the system captions.)

And on those shows that are captioned, when no captions are displayed, there's a small empty box showing where the caption normally is.  Somewhat annoying.  I think this is just on the Roku HD.  [Maybe I can change the background.  Nope makes no difference on the Roku since they're using their own caption system.]

And I notice it runs somewhat sluggishly on my Roku HD.  And is prone to errors.  Every once in a while it seems to lose connection and I have to restart the app.  [Or it stops being responsive to the remote control and just keeps playing on without the subtitles.]  Seems more responsive and less prone to crashes on the Apple TV.

Auto-play is not supported on the Apple TV, but oddly is supported on the Roku HD.

Thinking about getting a Roku 3, so stay tuned.

*** [5/3/14]

Free hulu coming to your mobile device this summer.  Kind of diminishes the attraction of Hulu Plus.  I wonder if that includes Roku and Apple TV.  Probably not.

*** [5/5/14] check out my Roku 3 post for more comments.  Summary:  Hulu Plus plays much better on the Roku 3, but uses their own captions.  Youtube much more responsive on the Roku 3, but captions for some videos are cut off.

*** [5/13/14] see my resetting my Roku post for more comments.  Summary: removed a bunch of apps on my Roku HD to see if it would help.  Didn't seem to.  Hulu Plus still locked up with captions on.  But then turned captions off and it seems OK.

*** [4/8/15] from my other post in the Amazon Fire TV entry.  With Amazon Fire TV, you can now customize the captions for Hulu Plus and turn off/on auto-play.  So I would now rank the Fire TV as my favorite streaming box for Hulu Plus.  And I also see that you can turn off/on auto-play on the Roku as well.  As far as I know, there's no way yet to turn on auto-play on the Apple TV.