Hulu 'Intentionally' Slows Down PC Streaming

[toygun1234]

link to one of many articles: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/249643/20200515/hulu-intentionally-slows-down-pc-streaming-for-app-to-increase-downloads-accuse-users.htm

link to reddit post:

I don't know if this is old new to everyone, but it's new to me: was just trying to watch some new hulu show, and it's garbage quality on my desktop. google, saw these articles/posts, tried it on my samsung tablet, looks way better, and, sure enough, watched it on my Amazon fire stick on my tv: full udh quality. I'm so heated about this i'm considering dropping Hulu, seeing as i do most of my watching on my desktop...

 

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

Yeah, not really news but I've seen this first hand. Watching LEGO Masters with my gf on her Bros PS4 and the stream was full 1080p. My smartTV streams full 1080p, my tablet and phone stream 1080p. The only thing that does not is my MacBook Pro and my Desktop. 

 

What irks me more about Hulu is that it's a paid service and you still get ads....thankfully I get my Hulu account as a bundle with my phone plan.....

[Trik'Stari]

And people laugh when I tell them I don't pay for "cable", or Hulu, or Netflix. The only thing I pay for is Amazon prime and that's just for shipping. Although I'm likely to drop that considering the other day it inject an ad into a movie I FUCKING OWN.

 

All I can say to shit like this:

Do you want piracy? Because that's how you get piracy.

 

Fuckin....YARRRR MATEY'S

[Guest]

It's pretty common, Netflix also does this too

[toygun1234]

16 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

And people laugh when I tell them I don't pay for "cable", or Hulu, or Netflix. The only thing I pay for is Amazon prime and that's just for shipping. Although I'm likely to drop that considering the other day it inject an ad into a movie I FUCKING OWN.

 

All I can say to shit like this:

Do you want piracy? Because that's how you get piracy.

 

Fuckin....YARRRR MATEY'S

seriously... I've heard it several different ways, but essentially piracy, when it comes to things like this, is a service delivery issue. make it easy and convenient to watch content and people (like me) are willing to pay for it. take away the ease and convenience and pull crap like this, and people (like myself) become unsatisfied paying customers and take our business elsewhere, namely, to bit torrent. Also why I've been running my plex media server for years, ripping purchased blu rays (aside.. still waiting for makeMKV to release a stable build that can rip 4k UHD discs).

[Trik'Stari]

1 minute ago, toygun1234 said:

seriously... I've heard it several different ways, but essentially piracy, when it comes to things like this, is a service delivery issue. make it easy and convenient to watch content and people (like me) are willing to pay for it. take away the ease and convenience and pull crap like this, and people (like myself) become unsatisfied paying customers and take our business elsewhere, namely, to bit torrent. Also why I've been running my plex media server for years, ripping purchased blu rays (aside.. still waiting for makeMKV to release a stable build that can rip 4k UHD discs).

Same here.

 

Not to mention the issue of Netflix no longer carrying the things I want to watch, because "licensing issues". Sorry Disney, I'm not buying a separate streaming service just because you want more money.

 

The entire entertainment industry needs to take a serious chill pill when it comes to how they estimate their own value. There's a big reason I don't watch movies in theaters anymore, and likely never will again.

 

The only exception to that would be Youtubers like @LinusTech. He realizes that people likely use Adblock when watching youtube, I know I do, and works around it to put ads into his content directly, yet he must realize that people like myself will simply skip over it, but at least that's an option I have that is within my control.

 

Advertising is vastly overvalued in my opinion, but at the same time I do want content creators like Linus and his team to make the money that they deserve, to continue doing what they appear to at least enjoy doing.

[Arika]

20 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Advertising is vastly overvalued in my opinion, but at the same time I do want content creators like Linus and his team to make the money that they deserve, to continue doing what they appear to at least enjoy doing.

Before I used adblock, I don't think there was any pre roll ad on YouTube that made me interested in their product. 

 

Hell most ads serve no purpose than to be ignored.

[justpoet]

Hulu is crap.  Most of the folks who have content on it have also made or been making their own streaming services.  They all think you're going to be willing to pay a bunch for it, forever.

 

As stated above.  Having to pay a bunch is why people ditched cable and went for piracy.  Then legitimate services appeared that were both reasonably priced and reasonably easy and quality.  That stopped most people from piracy.  This kind of crap is just going to bring it all back.

[Trik'Stari]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

Before I used adblock, I don't think there was any pre roll ad on YouTube that made me interested in their product. 

 

Hell most ads serve no purpose than to be ignored.

That's an argument I've been making for years.

 

At best, your advert can fail to annoy me. At worst, it will annoy me to the extent that I will go out of my way to never buy anything from your company. I don't care if your product is cheaper, I won't buy it because you both inconvenienced and annoyed me.

 

At this point if I was, for example, a major video game manufacturer, I would fire my entire marketing division and pay one person to talk to gaming news outlets, and make tweets. That's all that's really required beyond word of mouth, at least for video games.

[DrMacintosh]

3 hours ago, Darpyface said:

It's pretty common, Netflix also does this too

Not if you use the Netflix UWP app or Safari on a Mac. 

[poochyena]

yea. hulu quality is garbage on PC. Amazon prime video is WAY better.

People have complained about it for a long time

https://community.hulu.com/s/question/0D73h000000MDvZ/poor-video-quality-on-my-pc-but-not-firestick

(edit, just realized thats the same link OP posted. well, anyways, its a good read.)

 

Oh, btw, same deal on Netflix. You can't stream 4k video on PC. They don't tell you this on sign up though, so I paid extra for it only to soon realize the content wasn't in 4k. I complained and got my money back, but who knows how many are paying extra for 4k and not getting it. They should be sued.

Edited May 18, 2020 by poochyena

[Zodiark1593]

11 minutes ago, poochyena said:

yea. hulu quality is garbage on PC. Amazon prime video is WAY better.

People have complained about it for a long time

https://community.hulu.com/s/question/0D73h000000MDvZ/poor-video-quality-on-my-pc-but-not-firestick

(edit, just realized thats the same link OP posted. well, anyways, its a good read.)

 

Oh, btw, same deal on Netflix. You can't stream 4k video on PC. They don't tell you this on sign up though, so I paid extra for it only to soon realize the content wasn't in 4k. I complained and got my money back, but who knows how many are paying extra for 4k and not getting it. They should be sued.

Unless my knowledge here is outdated, you need hardware that supports PlayReady 3 (kaby lake or later iGPU or GTX 1050 or later) and using Microsoft Edge to get 4K Netflix on PC. Oh, and an hdcp 2.2 display. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

5 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

All I can say to shit like this:

Do you want piracy? Because that's how you get piracy.

 

Fuckin....YARRRR MATEY'S

you realize that online streaming is not the only way to watch movies right? if you wanna own your content and watch without intrusions at much higher quality than any streaming service you can buy the movie on physical media, aka blu-ray. 

[Trinopoty]

7 minutes ago, Ashley said:

you realize that online streaming is not the only way to watch movies right? if you wanna own your content and watch without intrusions at much higher quality than any streaming service you can buy the movie on physical media, aka blu-ray. 

Well that's just much more expensive than streaming. You have to get

a) A bluray drive

b) A software to play it (on PC) which is expensive

c) A desk shelf to store the disks

d) A backup solution probably because disks might get damaged.

 

Not to mention that not everything is available as physical media or at every location.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

23 minutes ago, Trinopoty said:

Well that's just much more expensive than streaming. You have to get

a) A bluray drive

a second hand PS3

 

23 minutes ago, Trinopoty said:

c) A desk shelf to store the disks

who doesn't have a shelf?

 

23 minutes ago, Trinopoty said:

d) A backup solution probably because disks might get damaged.

if you take care of your disks then they will be fine. 

[Trinopoty]

2 minutes ago, Ashley said:

a second hand PS3

 

who doesn't have a shelf?

 

if you take care of your disks then they will be fine. 

So you want everyone to get a PS3? Also, taking care of disks is a maintenance burden, one that not many people will like.

Also, you didn't say anything about my last point. Not everything is available as physical media. Sometimes it's not available at certain locations, sometimes it's only available as digital.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, Trinopoty said:

So you want everyone to get a PS3?

no, i'm saying that getting a device capable of playing the discs doesn't have to be expensive. 

 

Just now, Trinopoty said:

Also, taking care of disks is a maintenance burden, one that not many people will like.

i have tons of dvd's that i don't maintain, i just keep them in the case and i play them in a known good player and just doign that has never resulted in a dead disc. 

 

1 minute ago, Trinopoty said:

Also, you didn't say anything about my last point. Not everything is available as physical media. Sometimes it's not available at certain locations, sometimes it's only available as digital.

that is a very rare occurance. not enough of an excuse to pirate movies. 

[Trinopoty]

6 minutes ago, Ashley said:

that is a very rare occurance. not enough of an excuse to pirate movies. 

Not rare at all. The selection where I live is extremely limited. None of the shit that I want to watch is available as physical, sometimes, not even digital.

Getting them imported takes tons of money.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, Trinopoty said:

Not rare at all. The selection where I live is extremely limited. None of the shit that I want to watch is available as physical, sometimes, not even digital.

Getting them imported takes tons of money.

i dunno what country you live in but where i am that's not a problem. 

[RejZoR]

Netflix is doing same shit. 1080p everywhere, just not on PC in browser because lame reasons. You have to use their dingus clumsy app to get 1080p video. In browser it just works better when I want to move the video somewhere on dekstop or even put it in a popup video via Firefox. No such thing in the damn Win10 app.

[Tellos]

this is what everyone wanted, they complained cable and DVDs and blu rays were too pricey. Well THIS IS the cost cables been paying, this IS what buying discs avoided. But when you demand convenience and kill other options well those guys who gave you the option you're using wont care anymore. Everyone things streaming is a cash cow and so they all want a piece. why I still buy discs for some things, and physical books.

[NumLock21]

I don’t see what’s big deal when watching hulu at 480p, was watching a movie on Hulu 2 days ago and the quality looks fine. 720p, 1080p and up will look better, but I would rather have hulu stream at a decent quality, and have the rest of my internet bandwidths allocated to something else, say steam game downloads. That way while I’m watching a movie, game downloads in the background, and by the time movie finishes, game finishes downloading too.

 

[MageTank]

7 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Netflix is doing same shit. 1080p everywhere, just not on PC in browser because lame reasons. You have to use their dingus clumsy app to get 1080p video. In browser it just works better when I want to move the video somewhere on dekstop or even put it in a popup video via Firefox. No such thing in the damn Win10 app.

I don't have a problem getting 1080p to work in Netflix on my browsers, but getting 4K to work has been nearly impossible, even when using Edge or the built in Windows 10 app. This is with a gigabit connection, an RTX 2080 Ti with HDCP 2.2 support (also tested my 8700k's iGPU, no dice) and paying for the 4K Netflix subscription. My "monitor" is a 4K LG OLED TV. I simply cannot get a 4K stream from the PC, but if I swap over to my TV's Netflix app, works fine in 4K.

 

I honestly don't get it, it makes no sense and it appears to be an issue for many people, not just myself. 4K YouTube works fine in any browser...

[poochyena]

14 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Unless my knowledge here is outdated, you need hardware that supports PlayReady 3 (kaby lake or later iGPU or GTX 1050 or later) and using Microsoft Edge to get 4K Netflix on PC. Oh, and an hdcp 2.2 display. 

Yes, but netflix doesn't tell you this on the sign up page. And even their help page doesn't mention it unless you click one of the tabs below, and EVEN THEN, it makes no mention of hardware requirements, unless you click another link, and then click "Netflix in Ultra HD".
So yea, Netflix tells you this, but no where in the sign up page, and even in the help pages, its buried under several links.

[RejZoR]

4 hours ago, MageTank said:

I don't have a problem getting 1080p to work in Netflix on my browsers, but getting 4K to work has been nearly impossible, even when using Edge or the built in Windows 10 app. This is with a gigabit connection, an RTX 2080 Ti with HDCP 2.2 support (also tested my 8700k's iGPU, no dice) and paying for the 4K Netflix subscription. My "monitor" is a 4K LG OLED TV. I simply cannot get a 4K stream from the PC, but if I swap over to my TV's Netflix app, works fine in 4K.

 

I honestly don't get it, it makes no sense and it appears to be an issue for many people, not just myself. 4K YouTube works fine in any browser...

No you're not. Because all other browsers will always stream it at 720p for some dumb ass fucked up reason despite all the DRM garbage they put in between. But will work on Edge. Go figure.