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zwolanerd

I guess I just like liking things

I try to be mostly positive here on zwolanerd, but every so often I’ve got to gripe about something because I just can’t not gripe about it, so please bear with me.

Last summer I got a free 3-month subscription to Hulu Plus because… I don’t remember. Because Xbox One, I think. I watched a few things on it and then my wife and I started watching Community because she’d never seen it. I have seasons 1-3 on DVD, but Hulu had all of the seasons and it’s easier to watch without having to swap out DVDs, you know? We didn’t get through it all before the free trial ran out, so we ended up buying two more months at something like $8 or $9 a month, I’m not really sure. Somewhere along the line in those months, I started watching Red Dwarf, and then used it to watch a few new Fall shows that I was curious about, but not curious enough about to set the TiVo for. I still haven’t finished Red Dwarf, but I’ve been using the service for around 7 months now.

Gripe #1: Commercials

Why am I paying $8-9 a month for this if I still have to watch commercials? I’m basically paying twice (once in money, once in time) for the show. Three times if you want to count my Internet connection.

Gripe #2: Selection

Why am I limited to the last five episodes of a currently running show? I’m sure this is some sort of licensing deal, but if they’re getting my monthly money and the money from commercials, I assume the showrunners are getting paid somewhere along the line.

Gripe #3: Limitations

This one made me grrrrrr loudly and long enough to hurt my throat a little. I went to watch the season premiere of Cougar Town last week on my TiVo. Since I had the season pass set up, I knew it would grab it and I’d catch up with it whenever. It turns out that when we re-did our cable bill last summer, the new package we have doesn’t include TBS. Weird, right? I thought TBS came with just about everything. So the TiVo recorded a half hour of black screen, which works as a screen saver but not much else.

No big deal, I’ll watch it on Hulu. I searched for Cougar Town on the Xbox One Hulu app and… nothing. Weird.

I go online and search for Cougar Town on the Hulu website. There it is. But wait! “Please select your cable provider and sign in.” I see where this is going. “We’re sorry, your current cable subscription doesn’t include this channel, so we can’t show it to you.”

ASDAHDFKLSADGHASF:FASDFK

Again, I’m sure there’s some kind of licensing thing here, but I assume TV networks want to make money, so why are they making it so difficult? Very frustrating.

So the short version is: once my current month is up, I don’t think I’ll be paying for it anymore. I just gotta finish Red Dwarf first.

 

 

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