If you were considering investing in a subscription to Hulu Plus, the streaming video service that offers up-to-date shows still airing on television in almost real-time, you may want to hold off until after Hulu unveils its new Hulu for iPhone and service changes sometime this summer.
Hulu announced big changes to the way it offers shows at the Hulu Upfront yesterday. Essentially, Upfronts allow networks to talk directly to television advertisers about the content they have coming up in the future. In addition to announcing cross-platform advertisement buys and a few new shows, Hulu announced that it would be ending its policy of limiting Hulu viewers to only watching the network’s content on a mobile device if they have a Hulu Plus subscription. Hulu also announced that it would refresh its Hulu for iPhone app.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that Hulu’s press release indicates it won’t open up its entire catalog to mobile streaming. Presumably, that means the company isn’t preparing to do away with Hulu Plus entirely. Today, users are required to have a Hulu Plus subscription to watch on their mobile devices. Hulu Plus costs $7.99.
Presumably, Hulu will roll out this free streaming to all of its mobile apps including the ones on the iPhone, Windows Phone. It doesn’t look like the company has plans to not require Hulu Plus for watching video on the Xbox One and other consoles.
