Hulu Plus Faces Fury in App Store

Jul

2010

Leslie Meredith, TechNewsDaily Senior Writer
04:29 PM ET

Hulu Plus was released as a free app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch just two days ago. The app will allow users to subscribe to Hulu’s subscription TV service for $9.99 a month. While the service itself is not yet available, outraged customers have posted more than 2,400 reviews with the lowest score possible on iTunes.

At this time, people can register to receive an invitation to join Hulu Plus and try out a small sampling of content. The full service itself is scheduled to roll out later this month, but the bad reviews reflect outrage at having to pay for TV that is available for free on Hulu.com along with the same number of ads. Of the nearly 3,000 reviews posted, 82 percent gave Hulu Plus a one-out-of-five star rating.

All but four of the top 50 reviews voted most helpful were negative. Getting charged a monthly fee for TV with ads was the most common complaint.

For instance, “What idiot would pay 10 bucks a month to watch ads?” posted Mathom on iTunes.

Hulu Plus will offer the full current season of TV shows from its media company owners including NBC Universal, News Corp. (Fox) and The Walt Disney Co.

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar wrote on the Hulu blog that Hulu Plus is not a replacement for Hulu.com.

He said, “Hulu Plus is a new, revolutionary ad-supported subscription product that is incremental and complementary to the existing Hulu service. For almost all of the current broadcast shows on our service, Hulu Plus offers the full season.”

Hulu will be sending out invitations in waves over the next several weeks to those who have requested them. Random invitations will also be sent to Twitter followers and Facebook users who “like” Hulu on its Facebook page.

Kilar also said the company is thrilled to be able to bring all of this to you for the price of just $9.99 per month. Evidently, iPhone and iPad users don’t share his enthusiasm.

Hulu Plus will be available for the PlayStation 3 later this month and other Internet capable devices like the Samsung Blu-ray player in the future.