General HULU Questions

#1

Good Morning all,
I've been a happy user of channels for over 3 years now with Verizon FIOS. My contract expired and my price jumped 20$. In the final analysis going to full hulu keeps me under the price for using verizon TV by 10$. So question time (note i do not care a great deal about sports, i watch my GB Packers and occasionally Milwaukee Brewers):

  1. Does anyone use the full HULU package with Channels? any issues streaming and recording?
  2. Are there any lessons learned from using a streaming service vice a Verizon or Cable package?
  3. How well does the COMSKIP work with hulu vice verizon tv or cable?
  4. Does the 2 screen limit with hulu apply when using channels as the interface?
  5. What are the number of channels that can be recorded at once using channels and hulu?

for those players watching the cost breakdown:
Verizon - 172 a month (Gigabit internet, 2 cable cards, 2nd from best tv package, not on a contract and price may go up at any time [a new contract is 182 a month as of now for the same setup])

HULU(including the new price increase)+Gig Verizon Internet - 169 a month (everything hulu no ads, ESPN, and Disney +) I own all the equipment. Price could go up on HULU at any time. Internet would be locked in for 10 Years.

A note on internet usage. I use allot of internet (according to verizon ab out 180 Gig a month). So I could lower my plan down to the next one down but I also don't want to cut myself short (both my wife and I do work from home sometimes at the same time on top of everything else).

So if you were me, what would you do?

#2

I seriously doubt that you need Gig Internet. TVE to Channels does not count toward your stream limit (at least in my case). I could easily get by with 100mips.

#3

Thank you. I apologize for not being clear on how much internet i use and have edited the post to reflect that. Do you do allot of internet stuff or have allot of smart home stuff on your network?

#4

Lol, I use that in a half a day. I’m up to 4 - 9 Tb a month. 180 gigs a month is nothing.

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#5

Thank you....do you use a Gig package or something less....Verizon offers 500mbps for 20 less a month...i have allot of smart plugs and devices on the network...if i can get by with less i'm certainly open to it...I have a TP-Link high end gaming router and it does an awesome job...

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#6

i have fios gig.

#7

I jumped from Xfinity over to Hulu. I am happy with the results thus far. Hulu doesn't provide TVE access to Hallmark channels and a few others, but I was able to add Frndly to fill in the gaps and keep my wife happy with the Christmas movies. I know there have been some reauthorization issues for some, mentioned over on the TVE Provider issues - Hulu thread. Those issues are usually for those running their server on NAS or Pi systems. I have my server on a mac mini and have no problems.

You also mentioned a price increase for Hulu, for what it is worth they just went up in price so a subsequent price hike would be rare but who knows? Disney just replaced their CEO so changes could be coming.

#8
  1. Hulu works great for me
  2. Hulu tve is more reliable than spectrum tve was because spectrum was slow to update credentials and would sometimes not authorize with a not in package error
  3. Hulu and cable comskip work the same on tve because they are the same source. You mentioned cable cards so I can’t say on tve vs a hdhr prime recording. My guess is they are similar
  4. No limit when using tve integrated with channels
  5. This would be server hardware dependent and internet download speed. But most likely you could record every channel Hulu offers at the same time. So more than you would ever need.

One thing to consider is local channels. Depending on you location will determine locals available the Hulu tve. Fox will only be broadcasting prime time via tve and offline the rest of the time.

You are not locked in to Hulu so your best bet may be to use Hulu for a few months to reset the “new customer discount” with fios tv. Then revisit fios when they start blasting you with low priced tv offers.

Gig internet is overkill for 98% of people, 500mb is overkill for 85%. 100mb is plenty for most. I do have gig fiber but that has more to do with how I like to reward innovation than actual need. I also use nvme ssd as storage for the same reason even though a good ole spinner hhd would be fine

#9

Hulu works fairly well for me, paired with a $20/month Spectrum Streaming only package that picks up what Hulu is missing. I did just have a Hulu authentication issue this last weekend where it required some user intervention to get my Discovery series of channels back working again.

I don't know what will be available via TVE for your local channels, but for me it was very little so I still need to have an antenna with a HDHR OTA tuner to pick up those 50 or so channels (you won't get 50 local channels via TVE).

Except for the small handful of Brewer games on your local affiliates, Channels DVR won't get any others because it's broadcast on Bally's which isn't compatible. I used to get Bally's with my Spectrum cablecard account, so this was a loss using Channels DVR. Was Bally's available via cablecard and FIOS using Channels DVR?

With the latest Hulu price increase, I think I'll be paying about $80/month for it (varies based on your add-ons). Spectrum bill is about $100/month for that small streaming package and 300 Mbps Internet.

If I was able to get Verizon FIOS with 2 cable cards (for 6 total tuners), and their cable card streams were still mostly open (not flagged copy-once), Internet included, for less than $200/month, I'd jump on it. My cable service was far more reliable than TVE services.

#10

On second thought, I think I'd even double down on the FIOS cable card option. I'd get 4 cable cards to occupy my 4 HDHR Prime's, use 6 tuners in Channels DVR and 6 tuners on a SageTV server running on the same machine.

#11

I have 100 MB and all is wonderful. I run my own router and QOS to avoid large downloads causing issues. Even without QOS it works well.

#12

Don't renew your contract. A contract is not needed and what you have will remain at the same price. I'm doing this for years and the only price increase I've experienced is when I told Verizon I want to rent another cable card and don't want to pay for anything except that cable card. I want my packages to stay the same. I'm grandfathered into a super package that's no longer available. I'm paying about 1/2 of what people that did contract renewals.

I use my own router, Channels DVR on my own hardware. I get all the premium channel apps so I have the equivalent of on demand. We stream Prime Video as Prime members. We have more content than we can deal with.

#13

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