Netflix VS Hulu

It's hard to remember a time before streaming video services were everywhere. It's almost impossible to pick up a device with a screen that doesn't support them, especially the two most popular: Netflix and Hulu. Netflix got started nearly 20 years ago on August 29, 1997, as a DVD-by-mail service. In 2007, it started offering streaming content, which has quickly become its core business. Hulu is similar, though it's centered more on TV than movies. It launched in March 2007, mainly as a syndication engine for owners like NBC Universal, and quickly became the go-to service for finding programs from most of the major television networks. If you're the type of person who will only subscribe to one, how do you pick? Let's take a look at each of the canadiets and see who the winner is

Price

Hulu’s price is a flat $7.99 per month for its base content. Hulu used to call this tier "Hulu Plus," but now it's just Hulu. The biggest problem with that base tier is it still shows commercials. If you're okay with that, then enjoy. But for an extra $4 per month, go commercial free. That's $11.99 per month for a lot of content sans commercials with a few exceptions that, due to streaming rights, must show commercials before and after a show. But that $11.99 per month, you can view Hulu on only one device at a time, but typically it'll run on two or three at a time. Hulu With Live TV will set you back $39.99 per month and combines its on-demand library with live television. That covers local, regional, and standard cable channels available in your market with support for up to two simultaneous streams, plus 50 hours of cloud-based DVR and full access to Hulu's on-demand programming. But if you want Live TV without commercials, you pay $43.99 per month.

Netflix you pay to see it on one screen in standard definition for $7.99 per month, or two screens simultaneously in high definition for $10.99 a month.You can have up to four screens at a time for $13.99 a month. All of Netflix is also ad-free.

Content

Hulu has the online exclusive carrier of the entire Criterion Collection of 900+ art movies. They moved to a brand new streaming service called Filmstruck from Turner Classic Movies. Hulu is also frequently missing lots of back seasons of TV shows. When it does have the whole back catalog of a major—like it does for Family Guy or Seinfeld—it makes a big deal out of it. But it's few and far between.Hulu also makes original shows that are popular such as The Handmaids Tale, Harlots, Difficult People and The Wrong Mans. The Hulu app is very easy to use and is not complicated at all to use.

Netflix used to be all about the movies. A lot of muck is made about the state of the Netflix movie catalog. In the fall of 2016, the Streaming Observer noted that the number of films in the IMDb Top 250 had dwindled to just 31, or 12 percent. But guess what? That was still more titles in the IMDb Top 250 than carried by Hulu. According to an AllFlicks report from 2016, Netflix had 4,335 movies and 1,197 TV shows available in the US, down 31.7 percent from 2014. In the last few years, Netflix has become much more TV-oriented, as most of its original content comes in the form of entire seasons of a show, usually about 10 to 13 episodes, all of which drop at once for binge viewing. It's a strategy that works well for Netflix, and many shows are popular from House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, Black Mirror, Master of None, and Marvel's The Defenders.

I went around our highschool to ask which service students liked better. With 120 students participating in the poll to see which streaming service is better, Netflix won by a landslide, with only 15% of the voters voting for Hulu because it has better shows and better movies than Netflix. 85% of students voted for Netflix because they said it had better shows and movies, and also netflix has more original movies/shows that are better than Hulu originals.