So our good friends at Hulu have finally released their HuluPlus subscription service, allowing you to stream current and back catalogue episodes of some of your favorite shows, for what seems to be a fairly reasonable price of $9.99 a month. You can stream via internet enabled Samsung TVs and Bluray players, Apple’s mobile arsenal, and supposedly the Xbox 360. Sounds good right?

Nah, there’s still the ads.

That any subscription service in today’s day and age should force the user to sit through advertisements is pretty much a boneheaded move. Contrast this with a similar program, Netflix, which is also nine bucks a month, but gives you NO ADS, plus a single DVD out at once. And honestly, has better shows - Torchwood, Dr Who, Dirty Jobs, not to mention movies like Yojimbo and the rest of the Criterion Collection.

Any content network worth it’s salt, that implements a subscription model, works damn hard to AVOID ads in their programming. If the user is paying a monthly fee, why should they be subjected to immersion-interrupting ad content? Do i really need to have Hyundai pitching me on the latest Sonata while I’m trying to watch a three year old House episode? I think not.

Just to give you an example of the consumer impact this has had so far, i direct you to the article on Ars Technica, to look at the comments, some of which are quite entertaining. I think my favorite is:

So, it’s like Netflix, except with ads, it costs more, it doesn’t allow you to get DVDs at the same time, and the catalog is smaller.
Awesome.

Yep, that about covers it.  Prediction: Utter fail.  Don’t double dip guys - if you want to show ads, don’t charge subscriptions, and vice versa.  Then again, not surprising coming from NBC and Fox.

EDIT: from @aanaravs - and they are upping their ad load, by 50% or more.  Jimminy crickets.