First impressions... Hulu Plus on Roku

So, the free trial period for Hulu Plus is over, and I'm now (for the time being at least) a paying customer... so, obviously, I'm not entirely dissatisfied with it. However, I'm still thinking of this as a short-term subscription for the purpose of catching up on some longish anime series, rather than a long-term viewing source... let me tell you a few reasons why.

First and foremost has to be the ads. Yes, even though you're paying Hulu for the stream, you still get ads. In and of itself, that's a nuisance... but the volume of ads is really a bit much. Here's a brief example of what watching an episode of anime is like:

• Start with a "this program is brought to you with limited commercial interruption by" message, usually followed by an ad.
• Anime title animation
• 1-2 ads (15-30 seconds each)
• First half of anime episode
• 1-2 ads
• Second half of anime episode
• 1-2 ads
• Anime credits/preview of next episode

I'm guessing that by "limited commercial interruption", they mean that they don't hit you for 5 minutes of ads at each break.

Apart from that... well, there are a number of smaller issues, but I can't say with certainty whether they are Hulu Plus specific, Roku specific, or something to do with Comcast, but they're still worthy of note. I have run into a number of occasions where the stream "lost sync", dropping the audio and advancing the video in short bursts. On one occasion, the video locked up on return from commercials, and had to be restarted to continue. Even so, it's generally rare enough that these glitches occur that they are (so far) endurable.

Then there are the Roku-specific issues with Hulu Plus. I'm guessing that the "channel" was created by folks at Hulu with little or no experience in actually using a Roku... how else can I explain some of the baffling exclusions from the interface? For example, you can "subscribe" to a series, which gives you access to all the shows in that series Hulu carries, thankfully broken out into seasons... but, from what I've seen, it doesn't remember what the last episode you watched was. There is a "star rating" displayed for each episode, and you can rate episodes yourself... but it always displays the aggregate rating (or, at least, doesn't visually differentiate between your ratings and overall ratings), so you can't even use that as a workaround. Better still, the standard "use the fast forward/reverse buttons to jump a page of selections" feature isn't available... so if, for example, you want to see episode 25 in a 50-episode season, you get to mash the right arrow button 24 times, waiting for the Roku to respond to each press, before you can get started on your show. Thankfully, you can "wrap around" from the first to the last episode by going backwards, so it's not as bad as it could be... but it's plenty bad as is.

But enough negativism... what about the good stuff? Well, you do get original-language shows with English subtitles, which I count as a plus, although not everyone will. It is faster than waiting on Netflix discs with four episodes apiece to work their way to your door... and it's certainly less expensive than going out and buying disc sets of these animes. And... that's about it, really. So, yeah, I'll burn through the series I really want to see, and, barring something exceptional cropping up on Hulu in the meantime, I'll drop Hulu Plus like a hot rock once I'm done.