Typically they won’t let you watch entire seasons, or even many recent episodes, without a cable subscription, even though they monetize with ads. They want you to have a cable subscription to get access via TV anywhere.
A meta thread for video streaming services - Netflix, Hulu, Disney, HBO, Warner, Prime, AppleTV, etc
Hulu. NBC shows are on Hulu, and they would rather you have a cable subscription (like @stusser mentioned) or subscribe to Hulu. I recommend the ad-free Hulu sub, it’s not much more and your time is valuable, and they (unlike say, Netflix) air episodes the next day, and in 1080p (unlike most cable providers).
Warning, Hulu has lost or NBC pulled shows from Hulu before, like Blacklist. It’s not entirely reliable for that network.
We’ve got a Hulu membership but they don’t have all of the episodes. Currently they have 7 through 11. Since we were in France, and Hulu didn’t let us watch outside of the US, we didn’t see the earlier episodes.
I guess we will just wait until NBC airs the reruns or wait until Netflix gets the entire season. Neither of us care about TV enough to pay $30+ per month. We will just make due with whatever Hulu or Amazon Prime Video offers. We may temporarily resubscribe to Netflix and mine the good shows from there - just like I’ll join HBO Now to watch Game of Thrones when they get it.
Yeah Hulu isn’t going to be your answer. For some series, they’ve gotten super stingy with back catalogs. Hell they don’t even keep all the episodes available even for the current season for a few of them.
Hulu and Netflix are fine for many shows, but the uncertainty and lack of consistency around certain shows is why I have absolutely no problem outright buying them from time to time.
Especially Cable shows on FX, AMC, etc. - Paying ~$25 for an entire season of The Americans was much better for me than paying for a cable subscription, trying Sling / etc., or waiting for them to come to some other streaming service.
Yeah, just buy the missing episodes on Amazon or whatever. They’re three bucks apiece. Or wait, if you don’t care enough to do that.
I buy series infrequently. They get pretty cheap, down to 10-15 even sometimes, but I am pretty patient. I just watched my 3 episodes of Vikings on History, and in 6-8 months it will show up on Prime or Hulu and I’ll finish this season.
Random tangent/complaint: Hulu has Survivor, and at a glance at least some of every season. But as I found out as early as season two, they’re missing individual episodes here and there.
It was hard to look at specifically what was missing (and almost as hard to Google) because I’ve never seen the show before and I’m trying to avoid spoiling things where I can (I don’t want to see a contestant’s face in the episode thumbnail for the later episodes in the season, for example), but I saw some speculations that it was media rights for things like…songs contestants sang during the show? Or something? That seems pretty out there.
But CBS all access has all the episodes (as far as I can tell). If this is indeed something like another licensing/rights issue affecting certain episodes, this is a new one to me. I know of shows unavailable because music licenses didn’t cover rebroadcast or whatever, I know of shows that had their music changed from what was originally aired. But it’s a curious new wrinkle to see something like this where CBS has them all but Hulu doesn’t. Did CBS pay something to keep all those episodes Hulu just wasn’t willing to? Did CBS specifically not let Hulu have those episodes?
Anyway, just another weird artifact of the bizarre world of streaming “television” content.
The reverse is also true. For instance CBS All Access had the latest season of The Amazing Race last year, but Hulu had all the others. And if you look at CBS All Access now, they have zero seasons of The Amazing Race, and Hulu has all of them.
That’s a little more “normal”. CBS All Access would have the currently airing season, much as other network/cable channel apps have some or all current-season episodes of their on-air shows, with the back catalog going to some other third party service—Hulu in this case.
We’re between seasons now, so there’s nothing new for The Amazing Race on CBS All Access, and it’s been long enough that the most recent season has also joined the rest of the back catalog on Hulu.
That feels more or less like the “traditional” streaming arrangement.
I was struck by the peculiarity of two different services that are—at a glance—both offering the back catalog of a show (I didn’t check to see who had the most recent season when), but then it turns out Hulu’s catalog has apparently random holes in it. Especially odd given the format of the show. Who at Hulu first understood that this arrangement wouldn’t necessarily give them every episode of each season and thought “well, it’s still worth having most of them, people don’t care about every tribal council, do they?”
Seems strange. Amazon Prime has about 1/2 the Survivor and Amazing Race seasons with all episodes
Could be old licensing deals that haven’t expired yet.
It looks like Shark Tank now has somewhere in the ball park of 12-14 days to watch an episode before it expires from Hulu. It’s not even a full month. They’ve gotten ridiculous with this.
The Hulu You Love
Will Be $2 LessThat’s right: Hulu (our ad-supported plan) will be $2 less per month for the same access to more than 85,000 television episodes and movies, including award-winning Hulu Originals. That’s more TV episodes than any other U.S. streaming service for only $5.99.
You’ll see the new price during your first billing cycle after February 26, 2019.
As much as I like paying less for things… this doesn’t seem like a good thing to me.
“All our owners are pulling their content for their new streaming services. Here’s $2 I guess?”
I never heard of Pluto TV before.
It’s one of the better offerings for a totally free streaming service that still keeps the feel of cable with scheduled programming and distinct channels, served up via a traditional guide. The major streaming devices all have an app for it or you can pull it up in a web browser at pluto.tv.
There is a bit of commercial fatigue like I’ve noticed with Hulu - you’ll get very familiar with the limited set of ads if you watch for a while.
I mute ads so they don’t bother me too much. I may try Pluto, though it’s not like I don’t have a ton Netflix and Prime stuff to watch.