Break out the popcorn, Hulu fans! The popular video-streaming service announced that it will now offer full episodes of select TV shows for free on its mobile app.
For those of you who have already plunked down the $7.99 a month fee for a Hulu Plus subscription, this doesn't mean anything. However, for pirates who say, Give me free TV, or give me death! this is a victory indeed. Users will now be able to watch full episodes with some slight ad interruption on their tablets and smartphones.
"With our re-imagining of mobile viewing, we want you, our viewers, to have more access to the content you love, right at your fingertips," Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins said on a company blog post.
Of course, not too many shows will be free, so it's not as if you'll be able to watch every show you love for free, but still, some free TV is better than no free TV. Hopkins also took the opportunity to brag about Hulu's large and ever-growing viewing public.
"Hulu Plus is now accessible on more than 400 million internet-connected devices in the United States, including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Chromecast, and most recently, Amazon's new set-top box, Amazon Fire TV," he said. "After redesigning our living room devices such as Roku and Wii-U, we saw average-minutes-viewed increase by over 30 percent. And out of our tens of millions of viewers, there are 3,000 unique ways Hulu viewers access content on Hulu and Hulu Plus (for example, I watch on my iPad and Apple TV)."
He also announced that several of your favorite Hulu original series will be renewed for a second season. "Deadbeat" will get a second season and so will "The Awesomes," "Quick Draw" and "East Los High." In fact, the last three shows already have premiere dates set. Hulu will also introduce a few new original series, including "The Next Step," a teen-centric dance show, which starts on May 28 and the satirical "Hotwives of Orlando," which will debut in July.
Overall, Hopkins' announcements were good news for Hulu fans, bad news for cable providers and a challenge to Netflix, which also has original series and offers content by paid subscription only. Now that people have so many more options when it comes to streaming videos and TV shows from mobile devices, desktop computers and TV-connected video-streaming hardware, such as Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV and Apple TV, video-streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix will only continue to grow.
