My thoughts after two weeks of Hulu Live TV
We cut the cord on Cable TV about 2 years ago. At that time I installed an HD antenna for local stations and subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, and Sling TV. That has worked out okay but we’ve been missing programming on stations like CNBC, NBCSN, and MSNBC. We could have gotten those stations on Sling for another $20 on top of the $20 we were already paying.
About a week ago I upgraded our Hulu to include Hulu Live TV. Hulu with Live TV is $39.99 per month, which includes the $7.99 per month on-demand service we were already paying for, and that price is on a month-to-month basis with no extra fees.
The service comes with 40+ channels including the four major networks CBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC as well as a handful of sports channels like NBCSN and ESPN. It also included our local stations. So I disconnected the HD antenna canceled our Sling TV subscription and went all in with Hulu Live TV.
Here are some issues that we ran into. None deal breakers though.
**Confusing UI
**The interface takes some getting used to. It’s confusing. There is no grid like you may be used to. To make things more confusing it’s mixed in with the Hulu on-demand lineup. I still get confused but I eventually get to where I want to be.
**Buffering
**Hulu Live TV has buffering issues. At first, I thought it had something to do with our connection. We have 100 Mbps internet so that couldn’t have been the problem. After doing a bit of research, I found that buffering is a common problem for lots of folks. Sometimes it’s really irritating but again it’s not a deal breaker.
**Spike in data usage
**Watching local stations as part of Hulu Live TV instead of via our HD antenna resulted in a big spike in our data usage. I did some calculations and determined this was going to put us over 1 TB data allowance. To solve this problem I hooked the HD antenna up again for watching local stations.
For the most part, we’ve been happy with the Hulu Live TV service.
**Update March 24, 2018: Canceled Hulu Live TV
**The buffering problem has become a deal breaker.
Here’s the problem. We are rarely able to watch a program without some degree of buffering. Today I tried to watch MSNBC during lunch. The buffering was so bad it was impossible to watch. I tried CNN and got the same result. I’ve tried to roll with it but I can’t do it anymore. It’s just too frustrating!
I canceled the Live TV part of our Hulu subscription and went back to Sling TV. We don’t get as many channels with Sling but we do get the ones we watch the most.