Hulu Live TV vs Sling Orange+Blue. Which one is better?
Late last year Hulu started offering live TV, they call it “Hulu with Live TV” package starting at $39.99/month with minimal commercial interruptions or you can pay $43.99/month to experience the service without any commercials.
Hulu with Live TV Features
Here is quick summary of what’s offered on this new Hulu service:
- Hulu’s live TV service includes 50+ channels and on-demand TV channels, including family, kids, lifestyle, sports, news, music and entertainment
- Customers also get full access to the Hulu streaming library, Hulu Original series, hit TV shows and movies, exclusive programming, kids shows, and more
- Hulu with Live TV is available on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Xbox One, Apple TV, PlayStation, PC, iOS, Android etc.
- Unlike other service that charge for DVR, Hulu offers recording live TV with up to 50 hours using the Cloud DVR storage. You can purchased higher recording storage capability for an additional $14.99/month.
- Unlike some other streaming services, Hulu customers can watch live streaming TV on up to 2 devices (TV, iPad, phone etc.) at the same time. If you have more then 2 TVs, you can add Unlimited streaming option for an additional cost of $14.99 month.
Hulu really offers a wide selection of entertainment, news, family, kids and sports channels which will fit a lot of viewers taste. The comparison chart above give you a clear view of how Hulu Live TV is differentiating itself from the current market leader Sling TV. One downside is that Hulu doesn’t have channels like AMC, Comedy Central etc., this is due to a licensing deal between Viacom (Comedy Central’s parent company) and Hulu that expired last year. Viacom is not publishing any content on Hulu standard or Hulu Live TV.
A unique feature about Hulu Live TV is that it offers a lots of local broadcast channels that you can only get on local antenna or by paying extra local channel fee on any Cable/Dish providers. For customers with Netflix or Amazon Prime Video and Sling TV, it may be an attractive option to combine the two services and switch to Hulu. Currently the service is in beta so we can expect that their features and channel lineup to only get better.
Overall Hulu with Live TV is a great offer and offers a great choice to consumers who are looking to cut the cord or interested in an alternate streaming live TV service. Hulu is currently offering 30 Day Free Trial for new customer and a free week trial of their Live TV service for new and existing customer.
