In addition to shortly launching a stand-alone service, akin to HBO NOW, Showtime has entered into an fascinating partnership with Hulu.
This July, Hulu brings you a new way to get SHOWTIME. Get up to 30 days free of SHOWTIME with a Hulu subscription and see what you’ve been missing! After your trial, you’ll get SHOWTIME for $8.99/month in addition to your $7.99/month Hulu subscription.
What makes this unique is a 20% Showtime streaming discount along with both on-demand and live content being accessed from within the Hulu interface. Beyond SHO’s willingness to give up some control, I wonder if this signals Hulu interest in Sling TV space — should we expect additional channel-like offerings?
I’ve been somewhat neutral-to-negative on Hulu given a constantly shifting and incomplete library combined with commercial interruption of Scientology propaganda and a seemingly infinite supply McDonald’s ads. And Showtime Anytime is still delivered with only stereo sound. But perhaps both of these will have been corrected or perhaps the sum of these services will outweigh their component shortcomings. In any event, despite TiVo’s cord cutter interest, they run an older Hulu app… that is incapable of streaming Showtime. So owners will have to look elsewhere (like Roku and nearly every other modern platform). Hopefully the two are working on an update?
In other Hulu news… they’re going by just Hulu these days. The Plus in Hulu Plus has been retired.
Didn’t Hulu abandon their TiVo app? I swear I read that on TCF.
What happened to the talks Tivo was in with HBO to launch HBO now? The only info out there shows it will launch with Chromecast once Apple’s exclusivity ends.
How can Tivo have a cord cutting strategy when they don’t support what the consumer wants?
brennok, Hulu hasn’t been updated like the other apps… but TiVo’s still advertising it as of this week.
https://www.tivo.com/roamiopma15
Scott, it could be something of a catch-22. TIVo doesn’t have a large retail footprint (under 1m), but they need the companies on the other end to develop the apps for/with them. Perhaps they’ll have some expanded app partner news with whatever this “Aereo” announcement is.
This is the thread I was thinking of…http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=525727
A few notes: from what I read on Hulu.com, they only mention streaming of the live Showtime channel being available on Hulu.com, not through the Hulu app. Don’t know if that means anything or not.
While Showtime Anytime is currently restricted to only stereo sound, maybe the upcoming OTT Showtime service (which will be delivered through a different app) will support DD 5.1.
Doesn’t Hulu stream all HD video at only 720p (at least through their TV-connected platforms)? I know Showtime broadcasts via traditional TV at 1080i and it appears that Showtime Anytime streams at 1080p through Apple TV 3. I haven’t read any info on what resolution Showtime will stream, either through the new standalone app, through Hulu, or through Playstation Vue.
Dave, while you mention a catch-22, with TiVo’s small retail footprint making it hard to attract HBO or Showtime to their app platform, I find it hard to believe that they can get Yahoo Screen and AOL On to produce TiVo apps but can’t get a subscription service like Showtime, where there’s real money to be made by both the provider and by TiVo. Showtime is being very aggressive out of the gate in getting their streaming service on a range of platforms through various partners. Surely they’ll come to TiVo by year’s end. How expensive can it be for a huge corp like CBS (owner of Showtime, as well as the CBS All Access subscription streaming service) to develop an HTML5 app (which could probably be deployed with little or no tweaking on platforms other than TiVo)?
Someone should tell Suddenlink that Hulu no longer supports TiVo. ;)
“MAY 27, 2015 Suddenlink, which has about 1.1 million TV subscribers, will work with Hulu to provide customers who have TiVo set-top boxes access to Hulu’s SVOD service some time later this year. The operator reached a similar deal with Netflix a year ago.
Hulu’s pact with Suddenlink comes after the streaming-video provider landed similar reseller deals with Cablevision Systems and five smaller cable companies: Armstrong, Atlantic Broadband, Mediacom Communications, Midcontinent Communications and WideOpenWest.”
http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/suddenlink-inks-hulu-deal-to-stream-service-via-set-tops-while-shunning-viacom-1201506455/
The following devices will have access to SHOWTIME on Hulu:
o Latest Roku Players, TVs and Streaming Sticks
Latest? Does that mean only 2015 model Roku 2 and 3? The latest Roku 1 doesn’t support the “Updated official Netflix® app with profiles”.
Bryan10024, that’s actually a promising sign that the Hulu app will ultimately be updated…
Do people really care about Hulu? The tagline should be, “Whenever I pay to watch commercials I think “Hulu”?
Ugh an article about Hulu so someone has to comment on about commercials that have always been part of the deal. It’s so old, can we move on? They have 9 million subscribers so yes someone cares. They didn’t invent commercials either, you get them with free OTA television and you also get them with paid cable/satellite services. Hulu offers less commercials than the others while maintaining an affordable rate for easy on-demand viewing of most network programming. Seriously, let it go.
Both of which can be skipped with a DVR like TiVo or even better removed so they aren’t there for future viewings. Last I looked that wasn’t an option with Hulu.
Some don’t mind the commercials, some do. Both positions can coexist.
At the end of the day, it’s a question of value. Personally, I’d deal with the commercials and pay for Hulu… if they provided more episodes and/or entire seasons. Sadly, for Hulu, it may be a licensing issue mostly out of their control. Which is why this new Showtime relationship is interesting – it’s a different type of implementation for them with “live TV” and a full catalog of on demand. Wonder what else they’re working on, could they become a fuller-featured Sling TV for example? Will CBS ever play ball?
Perhaps as typical as a the Hulu commercial call-out… debate in blog comments! ;) Hey, at least we’re keeping it civil. Good work, folks.
I use to get upset about the commercials on Hulu but theyre light on ads compared to OTA and cable. Like Dave said, my beef with them is that they only have some episodes from a season sometimes. I’m glad to see that Showtime is bundling with Hulu. I can just add it on to my Hulu subsciption and have them both in one app. I wish HBO would have done something similar. Anyway, time to get the new Roku 3.
FYI: Showtime’s website confirms that, at launch, their live streaming channel will only be available, when packaged through Hulu, at Hulu.com. However, given the “at launch” qualifier, it sounds like live Showtime will eventually come to the Hulu app too (on some platforms, anyway).
Wonder if this relationship will pave the way for CBS All Access to be optionally bundled into Hulu as well (also with live TV streaming)? At $6 a month, CBS All Access seems way too expensive to me but, if discounted a couple bucks (like Showtime) and offered as a $4 Hulu add-on, I’m sure there’d be some takers. Having on-demand access to pretty much all the recent content of the big four broadcast networks, plus a smattering of other shows and movies (including a growing roster of Hulu originals/exclusives), all in one app/interface for $12 (with the option of also adding a premium network in Showtime) could prove to be a pretty compelling replacement for basic cable + HD DVR, as long as you don’t need lots of sports/ESPN. I can imagine a lot of folks under age 30 going that route.
Does anyone know of anyone using CBS All Access? I wonder if it will prove to be more profitable than the revenues they’ve passed on by not participating in Hulu the last 5 or 6 years.
Tim, thanks for the clarification – good find, I agree with your read.
Matthew, I don’t anyone who subscribes to CBS All Access. If numbers are low, I’d think they’d be primed to partner for broader exposure (and hopefully a better rate for the rest of us). Showtime is a CBS property…
I received an offer for a free week of CBS All Access. So, I decided to try it out, for one reason – to watch the seasons of Survivor I have missed..I still have cable, and I can DVR all the current CBS shows. So I really had no other need for this channel.
So I started the first episode of Survivor and settle in. During the first 20 minutes, it interrupted the program FOUR times. Five if you count the ones at the beginning. These breaks were 1.5 minutes, then 10-20 seconds while it re-retrieving the show. As the program progressed, the frequency of breaks seemed to lesson a bit, but now they were 2.5 minutes.
I couldn’t imagine paying to watch a fourteen-year-old OTA show and be pelted with a dump-truck load of commercials. By the time the episode ended, it was terribly disjointed. And the ads made the experience unwatchable.
To cancel I had to call. The friendly guy at CBS asked me why I was leaving. I explained the Survivor ads blitz. He apologized and said that they were “working on reducing the number of interruptions, and to please try them again sometime.” Maybe I will when I am finally free of Comcast and if they tweak the heck out of it.
Wow. That’s horrible. Given the pricing of CBS All Access vs. that of Hulu, I assumed CBS AA must be commercial-free. Les Moonves must be smoking crack if he thinks that service is going to take off.
I have to say Hulu is better than I expected on the ad front. I watched a couple half-hour shows on it last night (Comedy Central’s Review and Starz’s Party Down) and was only shown one 30-second ad at the start of each show. There were brief pauses in the video in a few other places, where it looked like Hulu might insert ads (or where ads originally appeared when the show aired on TV) but there weren’t any.
Sorry to hear about the CBS All Access experience. I was going to try the service out but I’ll wait to see it they will bundle it with Hulu and fewer ad interruptions. Hulu’s ads are not as bad as some OTA and cable programming, so I’d use Hulu in place of Tivo for those programs but many times they only offer a handful of the episodes. What’s up with that?
Showtime has been working on the TiVo app for me. While you don’t have direct acesss to it a simple visit to Hulu.com and add a Movie or Show from Showtime to your Queue and it shows up on the TiVo Hulu App love it!
Yeah, I’ve found I have to play a showtime video for a second on my pc, then it shows on my history on tivo so I can watch it on the good TV. Not ideal, but it works until something better is released.
Hulu app update coming…
“Hulu app update coming…”
All hail Xenu!
What if your five years’ delayed Apple TV service were available today? On a Roku? Or even better, on an OTA TiVo?