Hulu is still the most accessible service and will probably fully evolve in the Disney streaming ecosystem in the next few years. In other words, it’s only going to get bigger.

I saw them in the Live TV DVR recordings. I was able to block the ads in the video on demand. Hence, it's better to not record anything and just watch video on demand on top of good adblocking.

As noted in the Hulu help and in this thread, Hulu (no ads) refers to the Hulu library. Yes, it’s confusing initially.

Ask yourself this question - can I watch this tv show or movie with the basic Hulu $12.99 plan? If not, then expect the possibility of ads since you’re not viewing the Hulu library.

My complaint about Hulu is occasionally the DVR screws up, and I lose the last 5-30 seconds of a program. Sometimes that's just credits, but sometimes it's not, plus for things like Bob's Burgers, there's still stuff happening in the credits.
I tweeted them about it and they said, "Sorry."
The no-ads is confusing till you realize it applies to their library (which is pretty big). Of course Live TV will have ads, rather, commercials.
Oh, another weird thing - sometimes while watching something on DVR (I think), I'll try to FF through the ads. It says 'Seeking during the current ad is not allowed'. If I time it right so I get to the show return, it usually lets me, but I can't end it just prior to the show returning. I've noticed this mostly on Tacoma FD.
Anyway, even with those minor quirks, I've been very happy with the usability and content of Hulu. Every now and then I look into switching but I always find something missing with the competitor I'm researching.

I agree that the price keeps increasing more and more often than I want it to. But that's pretty much everything nowadays, and my current streaming setup - including everything I have - is still cheaper than we were paying for satellite.
Oh, and now they're charging for D+ and ESPN+ - I care less than zero for ESPN, and I have Disney for another year prepaid.

Losing the last few seconds of a DVR program has only happened to me a couple times, but yes, that is a problem. I always search for the On Demand version first. If that's not available, I'll watch my DVR version. The On Demand version has shorter ad timers than the actual broadcast commercial timers.

I chose Hulu Live over Youtube TV due to the Hulu library. I chose Hulu Live over my local cable company because I refuse to pay extra for DVR and the On Demand selection for my local cable company is TERRIBLE. I will never choose satellite.

And since Disney owns Hulu, I'm not worried about it getting demolished by a competitor and losing a lot of content.

So who else got this email today? What does it mean…? I haven’t paid for ESPN+ so I’m guessing I get it now?

Yes. This was part of the price increase. You now hey Disney+ and ESPN+

And they allegedly give you a 'full credit' if you already have Disney+ or ESPN+.
I'm not sure how the math works out. I just spent half an hour on chat with support about that and she said it's basically a credit of 3$, which is not even the value of each month with my pre-order price. For some reason I'm getting a bundle discount of 20.97 but I'm not sure what that itemizes to, and I can't see last month's itemized charge to compare it to.
And to make it even more interesting, I clicked the link and now Disney+ says I have 2 accounts, and to call (on the actual phone!) to deal with it.

Yea, this transition has not been very smooth. It took about 2 days for that activation link to get in my Hulu account. I called customer service and I kept checking my email for a notice on how to validate this promo.

I’m all set now, but it sounds like the bill credits are a pain to validate for others. I wasn’t currently subscribed to Disney+, so all I had to do was confirm my email. I think your Hulu Live and Disney+ emails should be the same to make the transition simple.

My current invoice arrived in email last night.
It shows

Disney+ $7.99/mo
ESPN+ $6.99/mo

Disney+ Subscription Credit -$7.99/mo

and has a "During Promotional Period/After Promotional Period" comparison at the bottom.
So they were able to match it up (I do use the same email address for both subs).
I wish they didn't highlight that I'm paying 6.99 a month for something I will never use and can't opt out of That's.....very cable-like.
There is a bundle discount so that helps.

In January both the bundle price and add-on (at least Enhanced DVR) are going up apparently, so Jan's total will be about 5.50 more than Dec, even including the bundle and already-subbed discounts.

BUT - I just went to Direct TV's website to remind myself. Their starter plan is 64.99 for one device, for one year, on two-year plan. So, yeah, I'm still a bit better off in pricing, and a whole lot better off in flexibility and ease of use.

Never had Hulu before. Until now. For Christmas, got a $25 gift card. Figured I'd do two months of the ad-free plan. Any movies or shows I need to check out?

The Great is excellent. Probably the best show on Hulu. Season 2 just came out a few weeks ago.

https://www.hulu.com/series/the-grea...e-d326fd302f7d

Palm Springs is a really fun movie with a 'Groundhog Day' premise.
Killing Eve is a good series, currently at 3 seasons with 8 episodes each, so wouldn't be hard to watch in 2 months.
The Handmaid's Tale is good, but pretty grim.

Thanks for the recommendations. Added them to My Stuff.

We thoroughly enjoyed the first 3 seasons of Saving Hope and enjoyed seasons 4-5.

I'm glad for all the suggestions as well. Just changed plans with Verizon and the Disney+ bundle is included as a perk, which means we have the ad supported version of Hulu now. I was going through last night saving a bunch of potential shows to check out.

I also enjoyed the Australian show Bloom on Hulu. It's about some people in a small town that discover a plant that may confer eternal youth to those who consume it. It's a sci-fi/drama/thriller. It's similar in many ways to another Australian series I really liked, Glitch, which is on Netflix.

Check out Future Man

I guess my previous post was deleted. Perhaps because I made reference to some illegal TV streams, likely against forum rules. Fair enough!

However, I still need to point out that when you say "ecosystem", you sound like a salesman. I know that you probably aren't, but you sound like one. Hulu is a big, bloated, mega corporation TV service that recently forced its customers to buy it's "Disney Plus" blunder.... I mean bundle. It's not a rain forest or coral reef, so I don't think ecosystem is the right word to describe it.

I still don't think that Live TV should be charging customers to feed them cringeworthy advertisements. If ads are being forced on me, the service should either be free or they should pay me to watch them!

Lastly, I want to point out... again, like I did in my post that was deleted, that Hulu's parent company, Disney, owns ABC networks and the National Geographic channel. Just recently, they tried to jack up the rates and got into a pricing dispute with Youtube TV. I guess they worked it out. But, it proves my point of greedy TV networks charging a bloated premium to feed customers with cringeworthy advertisements, with ever increasing rates.

I'll stick with Philo for now. it has 80% of what I want to watch and I can find the rest elsewhere, which I'm not allowed to mention. It's also cheap in comparison to the other services. The streaming quality of Philo seems much higher quality and has better reliability than Hulu, and they make it easier to skip the commercials on DVR recordings - a frame snapshot every 10 seconds, that appears, so you can see what you're skipping without having to wait for stream buffering.

Ecosystem is not a sales term. It’s used in discussions like for say…Disney. Disney’s “ecosystem” includes ABC, ESPN, Disney+, and….Hulu! All part of one company. So get used to this monster ecosystem they are tying together. This is why they now have this big package of Disney/ESPN/Hulu. They will continue to railroad over YouTube, Philo, etc. Sure they’re a good alternative but the good content will continue to get absorbed by the House of Mouse.

A big part of Philo is Discovery Networks. Unless Discovery Networks (Discovery, ID, MotorTrend, Science, TLC, etc) is purchased by ABC Networks, I don't see this happening. Philo has other channels like Reelz that aren't part of Hulu/Disney/ABC. Those would have to be purchased as well. I believe people will get sick of the ever increasing rates of Hulu when they can subscribe to services like Netflix, Philo or even illegal IPTV streams, or use Amazon Prime at a much lower cost.

I hope you're aware that most of these big TV companies are owned by the same shareholders anyway. Blackrock/Vanguard/T Rowe Price/Sate Street and many others - all the same company.

Looks real nice in 4k.

I'll second The Great, and I'll also recommend Only Murders in the Building and PEN15.

I saw Murders pop up while I was logged in, remembered hearing good things so I started to watch. Nice that the episodes aren't long.

Only Murders started slow for me but by the end was my favorite show of 2021.