Repetitive Ads You Can’t Skip Rival Waterboarding

I am now weeks into the cable-free lifestyle, so I guess I’ll report.

I do not miss cable (in my case, actually satellite) at all. I have Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Youtube. I watch Youtube for the most part. I watch Hulu maybe 5 days per week. I watch Amazon Prime rarely, but since the video portion of Amazon Prime comes with the free shipping at no extra charge, I plan to keep it.

Here is the breakdown.

Youtube is far and away the best source of video entertainment and education, and the price is right. I can learn about absolutely anything on Youtube. I could become a very credible engineer or mathematician using only Youtube and used textbooks. Youtube is packed with tool videos. If you want to do any type of metalworking or woodworking, Youtube should be your second stop, after joining an online forum. Youtube is also the best source for religious material. No contest.

Hulu is not as good as DirecTV for my purposes, but on the other hand, it doesn’t cost $200 per month. I have no use for nudie channels or network TV. I don’t watch sports. I like Motor Trend, TCM, History, and Discovery, and that’s about it. For a person like me, Hulu fills in all the non-Youtube blanks.

There are problems with Hulu. First, the ads are a horror. They charge you something like $50 per month for the basic service, and then they nail you for a few more dollars to get rid of ads. Then they give you ads anyway.

Hulu is EXTREMELY DISHONEST about ads. When you watch a Hulu show, you can bring up a bar at the bottom of the screen. The bar will contain long unbroken stretches which represent programming. The breaks represent ads. The breaks look very small compared to the unbroken stretches, giving you the idea that ads don’t take up a lot of time. In reality, a typical stretch of programming runs maybe 7 minutes, and ads will often go three minutes. I haven’t timed programs with a stopwatch, but it appears that maybe a third of a typical program’s running time is ads.

You can’t fast-forward past Hulu ads. If Hulu says you have 170 seconds of ads to sit through, you will darned well sit through them. Also, because Hulu isn’t a highly successful company, the ads lack variety. They don’t have a lot of advertisers. This means you will generally see the same ad several times during a show. It’s a form of torture.

Hulu has a DVR feature. You can record shows and watch them later. You only get 50 hours of cloud time, which is not much. If you record a show, you also record the ads. Then when you replay it, you get the recorded ads PLUS the Hulu-inserted ads. You can blow through the recorded ads, but you are still stuck with the inserted ads.

How do I know Hulu needs to fix its ad problem? Simple. When I watch a Hulu show that really tortures me with ads, I switch to Youtube or Amazon in frustration. Hulu is conditioning me to watch other services which beat them on price, so clearly, their methods are not smart.

It seemed like I didn’t get many ads when I first started using Hulu. Maybe they ramp them up once you’re hooked. I think Hulu is a crooked company, so it would not surprise me.

Other companies have better ways of handling ads. Cable and satellite companies let you fast-forward through recorded ads. Youtube generally allows you to opt out of ads after the first 5 seconds, which is brilliant. You may conceivably see an ad you like, and you are free to watch it in its entirety. On the other hand, you don’t have to watch the same ad about living with AIDS 900 times in one week.

Youtube is convinced I have AIDS. I keep seeing the same two AIDS ads.

I think you can pay for ad-free Youtube, but the ads on Youtube are so painless, I see no point in it.

Amazon doesn’t have ads, unless ads for Amazon shows count. Those ads play before your chosen programs, so your programs don’t get interrupted.

Hulu has a forum where you can complain and make suggestions. If they don’t like your posts, they delete them. When you ask why your posts were deleted, they pretend they can’t hear you.

I may dump Hulu. Nearly all of my TV shows are Motor Trend shows, and I can get the Motor Trend channel, ad-free, for $5 per month. I watch a couple of shows from other channels, but there are honest ways to get those programs without Hulu. I still have an Xfinity account, for reasons too boring to go into, and I can use that to get online access to some of the stuff I watch. I like Turner Classic Movies, which Hulu offers. Guess what? TCM movies are available online, free of charge.

Amazon Prime has a lot of mediocre shows I don’t want to watch. It also has The Grand Tour, which is nice, but you can go through a whole season in 4 days, and I’m already done with season three. There are some good “free” things on Amazon Prime, but generally, you have to pay if you want quality.

I like Better Call Saul, which is an AMC product. AMC puts all of the episodes on the Internet. There goes that problem.

I think shedding Hulu is a good idea. I may kill it and see how it goes. I can start again whenever I want. I could put part of the saved money into killing Youtube ads.

Final thing…I may be about to get fixed wireless Internet. I have DSL right now. Wireless speeds are much better. I have been waiting for unlimited wireless data, and it has finally become available. It’s not cheap; I would pay around $100 per month. I think it would be worth it. Life on 1.5 MBps is not normal.

The company that would sell me wireless access would use towers provided by Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile. Verizon would be optimal, because they give me 35 MPps on my phone on this property. Problem: Verizon is greedy. They throttle data after a certain point. After three days of TV, I would be cut off. That means I need to find out what the other towers can do for me.

The phone rep for the reseller said I might get 8 MBps. Hey, that’s four times what I get now. Hard to complain.

The more I think about it, the less I feel I can recommend Hulu. Their practices seem shady, and their ad policies sometimes make watching TV very unpleasant.

To sum up, Youtube is great, Amazon is okay, TCM is free, and the Hulu honeymoon is over. DSL is a horror. Fixed wireless is in my future, once I find a good way to get it.

Anything, including most diseases, is better than DirecTV.