Amazon Echo Club

[darryl]

If Netflix ever introduced commercials I would dump them immediately I found out. I'd imagine the comercials explain why Hulu is cheaper, yet clearly they are not passing on the ad revenue on to the customers if the double price for no ads is any indication.

If I'm paying for a service I don't want ads. This extends even to Amazon products where I will pay a little extra to avoid them.

[tubemonkey]

Video Services -- price/month

• Hulu ---- $7.99 (w/ com) | $11.99 (wo/ com)
  
• Netflix -- $7.99 (basic) | $10.99 (standard) | $13.99 (premium)
  
• Prime --- $9.92 (yearly plan) | $12.99 (monthly plan)

[tubemonkey]

Music, Video, & Books -- current services for Alexa/Echo Devices

Books

• Audible
• Kindle Books

Music

• My Music Library
• Amazon Music
• Prime Music
• Spotify
• iHeartRadio
• TuneIn
• Apple Music
• Broken Circuitry Radio
• Dash Radio
• Deezer
• Gimme Radio
• Pandora
• SiriusXM
• TIDAL
• Vevo

Speakers

• SONOS

Video

• Fire TV
• Hotwire Fision
• Fios
• Frontier
• DISH
• DIRECTV
• TiVo
• Skyworth Smart Voice
• Xbox
• Optic HUB
• NVIDIA SHIELD TV

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by darryl

My problem with Hulu comes down to one word. Advertisments. The last time I tried it there were simply too many of them for my liking.

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I don't think I've ever seen a free trial or a reduced price promo for no commercials. There's no way I would even try the service if I can't try commercial free.

To be honest, the commercials are not that bad. Do not think it is like watching OTA or cable TV which now a days tends to show 33% commercials for each program. In other words, they show about 20 minutes of commercials with a 1 hour show which means that 1 hour show is actually only about 40 minutes. Hulu only interrupts an hour long show about 4 or 5 times and typically shows 1 or 2 minutes of commercials each time, so about half or less of the commercials from OTA and cable. I personally don't have an issue with that since it costs only $8/mo as opposed to Netflix which costs $12/mo and constantly says it cannot stream what you want to watch and tries to get you to pay another $12/mo to get their DVD service. For $12/mo Hulu will be commercial free. If someone already has Hulu, they only need to go into the account menu to change to commercial free version.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by darryl

If Netflix ever introduced commercials I would dump them immediately I found out. I'd imagine the comercials explain why Hulu is cheaper, yet clearly they are not passing on the ad revenue on to the customers if the double price for no ads is any indication.

If I'm paying for a service I don't want ads. This extends even to Amazon products where I will pay a little extra to avoid them.

Good luck with that as OTA, cable, satellite, and streaming services like Sling and DirecTV Now all have commercials. You can also pay for extended programming from channels like Motor Trend, CBS, PBS, etc., but expect commercials even if those commercials are about their channel, you still get commercials. Very few services seem to be completely commercial free. I wish they all were commercial free, but that probably will never happen unless you pay out the backside for a single channel.

[John F]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Good luck with that as OTA, cable, satellite, and streaming services like Sling and DirecTV Now all have commercials. You can also pay for extended programming from channels like Motor Trend, CBS, PBS, etc., but expect commercials even if those commercials are about their channel, you still get commercials. Very few services seem to be completely commercial free. I wish they all were commercial free, but that probably will never happen unless you pay out the backside for a single channel.

The nice thing about some of the other streaming services is that they have DVR capabilities that allow you to fast forward through the commercials; I don't believe you can fast forward through the Hulu commercials.

I didn't mind the Hulu commercials initially, but as I recall they got longer over time, and there were delays waiting for the commercials to start ( this was a couple of years ago.)

[tubemonkey]

My Echo 2s arrived yesterday. It's a pity I won't get to hear them because they're both presents. When my Dot 3s arrive, I'll be keeping two of them and will set them up in stereo.

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

My Echo 2s arrived yesterday. It's a pity I won't get to hear them because they're both presents.

I have two Echo 2s set up as a stereo pair. Your gift recipients should be very happy. They sound great!

I got a really good deal, at $39.54 each, from Amazon Warehouse a few days before Black Friday. They were listed as "Used - Good (minor cosmetic imperfection on the item)," but both are flawless.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by OtinG

To be honest, the commercials are not that bad. Do not think it is like watching OTA or cable TV which now a days tends to show 33% commercials for each program. In other words, they show about 20 minutes of commercials with a 1 hour show which means that 1 hour show is actually only about 40 minutes. Hulu only interrupts an hour long show about 4 or 5 times and typically shows 1 or 2 minutes of commercials each time, so about half or less of the commercials from OTA and cable. I personally don't have an issue with that since it costs only $8/mo as opposed to Netflix which costs $12/mo and constantly says it cannot stream what you want to watch and tries to get you to pay another $12/mo to get their DVD service. For $12/mo Hulu will be commercial free. If someone already has Hulu, they only need to go into the account menu to change to commercial free version.

I don't care if Hulu has less commercials, because I don't want any commercials. For the commercials Hulu does play, are they repeated constantly? To me that's even worse than more commercials and I have quit watching any on demand video from Xfinity because of this.

I have a Tivo with four or five tuners so even if I don't have something already recorded, I just go back a half an hour on whatever channel I want to watch and skip commercials from there.

I can't even try Hulu because it looks like I can't get a free trial of their commercial free service. Hulu makes it too difficult to find out what they have available, so I wouldn't want to pay for it before I know what's available. They used to have a bunch of shows that weren't available for streaming until one or two years after they broadcast and I don't know if they still do that.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by John F

The nice thing about some of the other streaming services is that they have DVR capabilities that allow you to fast forward through the commercials; I don't believe you can fast forward through the Hulu commercials.

I didn't mind the Hulu commercials initially, but as I recall they got longer over time, and there were delays waiting for the commercials to start ( this was a couple of years ago.)

Exactly. Any service with a DVR means that you do not have to watch commercials.

Edit: some cloud DVRs do restrict skipping commercials. Thanks ApK.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Exactly. Any service with a DVR means that you do not have to watch commercials.

Unfortunately, not true. "Cloud DVR," like what Sling and other services offer, routinely restrict skipping commercials on some content.
This is one of many reasons why I prefer locally owned and stored content. I'll suffer through the restrictions as a practical matter for some stuff, but I like best my local hard drive based DVR and local content, where only independent software devs (including myself) determine what I can do with it.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by ApK

Unfortunately, not true. "Cloud DVR," like what Sling and other services offer, routinely restrict skipping commercials on some content.
This is one of many reasons why I prefer locally owned and stored content. I'll suffer through the restrictions as a practical matter for some stuff, but I like best my local hard drive based DVR and local content, where only independent software devs (including myself) determine what I can do with it.

Yes, I forgot about that. I have Xfinity but use Tivo for my DVR so I don't have to worry about the cloud. Xfinity was talking about restricting commercial skip on it's cloud, but I don't know if they ever did it. The other reason for not wanting a cloud DVR is because you can't watch your recordings if your internet goes out.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by ApK

Unfortunately, not true. "Cloud DVR," like what Sling and other services offer, routinely restrict skipping commercials on some content.
This is one of many reasons why I prefer locally owned and stored content. I'll suffer through the restrictions as a practical matter for some stuff, but I like best my local hard drive based DVR and local content, where only independent software devs (including myself) determine what I can do with it.

What kind of content do they restrict?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

What kind of content do they restrict?

On Sling TV, I haven't figured out any clear rules on when it'll be allowed and when it won't. My guess is it boils down to "they'll restrict it whenever their deal with the content provider or advertisers says they will."

I've had some shows allow it one day and not the next.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by ApK

On Sling TV, I haven't figured out any clear rules on when it'll be allowed and when it won't. My guess is it boils down to "they'll restrict it whenever their deal with the content provider or advertisers says they will."

I've had some shows allow it one day and not the next.

Thanks. That's odd. It doesn't matter if the show you are watching was originally shown more than a month or so ago maybe?