Hulu Plus – A Scott Odyssey

Last September, I tried Hulu plus for about two months. I ended up canceling it because I didn’t use it that much to justify the $7.95 a month charge. My original thoughts were to use it on my iPad and possibly my TiVo. It didn’t really happen.

Flash forward to last week and I signed up for a weeks free trial of Hulu plus again. What’s changed is it is now available on the AppleTV. Last month even having Hulu plus available on the AppleTV wouldn’t really matter to me, but recently I have jailbroken the operating system on my Apple TV so I could install Plex media center. With Plex on my AppleTV I am using that as my main Media Center endpoint on my TV instead of using a Mac Mini plugged directly into the TV. So far it’s actually been working out really well. Adding Hulu plus for streaming of TV shows in addition to the downloaded content I have on Plex both available via the AppleTV has been working out pretty well. It’s also less buggy than using the Plex UI on my Mac Mini directly plugged into my television.

For now I just started paying for the first month of service. Will I keep it forever? Who knows, but were enjoying it while we have it.

With Netflix annoucning that streaming movies and TV shows will now cost extra I decided to check out alternatives. I have been skeptical about Hulu plus just because if i am paying for a streaming system I would hope that there is no commercials but with the ability to watch content via a Roku or iPad on Hulu won out and I signed up for a free trial.

Now I am in the middle of my first paid month and I will say I haven’t used it too much but when I have used it I was glad i had the service. Tivo failed me a few times and just going to an online library was nice.

Having Hulu Plus alone to me was useless since I don’t want to watch stuff on my computer. At the begining of the month I bought a Roku 2. The main reason I got one was to use it as a front end to Plex, but Roku offered a Hulu client so I figured why not try it. Together Hulu with presentation on the TV makes it worth it.

Of course the main reason i bought the Roku was to use it with Plex. Unfortunately the Plex client for Roku is very basic. I love the Plex media center but using it on the Roku was not as good as it is on my Mac Mini. I need to figure out what is wrong with my Mini that the HDMI connection is flakey.