Hulu Plus, the U.S. streaming television service jointly ventured by NBC, Fox, and ABC, is now available on the Apple TV. It began appearing over night, and now the official Hulu blog{.nofollow} has made the official announcement:
Keeping up with the latest episode of Family Guy, MasterChef and New Girl on Hulu Plus just got a little easier. And my living room just got a whole lot happier.Hulu Plus arrives on Apple TV today.
Just like Netflix, you need a Hulu Plus account to watch on your Apple TV. If you have one, or you're willing to set one up, you're good to go. If you want to try it out first, you can sample the service for a week for free. After that, it's $7.99 a month for the subscription service.
Also like Netflix, and pretty much everything else on the Apple TV, you can browse for popular, favorite, recent, categories like TV and movies, as well as search (either painfully with the hardware remote, or more easily with the Apple Remote app).
Hulu Plus has been available on rival streaming media boxes for a while now, so it's great to see it show up on Apple TV. While Apple considers the Apple TV "just a hobby", they're selling millions of them now, and last quarter sold more of the $100 1080p boxes than Microsoft sold Xboxes. Hulu Plus only increases the value proposition.
For those of you who are new to the service, Hulu Plus is the only online premium video subscription that streams current and classic TV programming on demand from hundreds of content partners, including top broadcast networks ABC, NBC, FOX, The CW and Univision. Hulu Plus subscribers can watch on any enabled devices for $7.99/month with limited advertising. For many popular shows on our service, Hulu Plus offers every episode of the current season. Hulu Plus subscribers also have access to back seasons and full runs of some of TV’s greatest shows, including many that were not available online before, in HD whenever possible.
Apple's Apple TV site hasn't been updated with a Hulu Plus listing yet.
If you're in the U.S. and have Hulu Plus, let me know what the experience is like on Apple TV, and how the content compares to Netflix and iTunes?
(Since, you know, I'm up in Canada, trapped behind The Wall an all...)
Update: Sounds like some of our craftier international users are changing the Apple TV location to U.S., logging in with their U.S. iTunes accounts, and enjoying a free week of Hulu Plus streaming. That would seem to indicate that Apple isn't actively filtering connections based on IP address or other geo-locators. No idea how long this loop-hole will last, so enjoy it if you got it (and want it.)
Source: Hulu{.nofollow}
