Need advice on Hulu Streaming..

[DarrylS]

I am not a technical guy, but somehow I can usually figure it out, not this time I need some easily understood common sense advice.

I stream TV on Hulu, most of the time it is fine, but when I watch football sometimes things seem to get screwed up and the game is on permanent pause. Noticed it when the Pats were playing Bucs this year...

Yesterday around 4:00 PM had a similar problem and could not watch any football at all. This morning I checked my internet speed and it revealed it was "very fast", 177.3 MBPS Download and 10.4 MBPS Upload ( no idea what this means). Yesterday for the Ga. vs Al & Ok vs Baylor games it worked with no problems.

Have tried the external antenna and instead of picking up towers 12 miles away it was partially picking up Boston TV towers, which failed as well.

Without a lot of technical jargon, which I will forget & not understand anyways, any suggestions as to how to make this better?? I do not want issues tonite...

Thanks..

 

[Kontradiction]

I am not a technical guy, but somehow I can usually figure it out, not this time I need some easily understood common sense advice.

I stream TV on Hulu, most of the time it is fine, but when I watch football sometimes things seem to get screwed up and the game is on permanent pause. Noticed it when the Pats were playing Bucs this year...

Yesterday around 4:00 PM had a similar problem and could not watch any football at all. This morning I checked my internet speed and it revealed it was "very fast", 177.3 MBPS Download and 10.4 MBPS Upload ( no idea what this means). Yesterday for the Ga. vs Al & Ok vs Baylor games it worked with no problems.

Have tried the external antenna and instead of picking up towers 12 miles away it was partially picking up Boston TV towers, which failed as well.

Without a lot of technical jargon, which I will forget & not understand anyways, any suggestions as to how to make this better?? I do not want issues tonite...

Thanks..

I had the same problem. Needed to download the CBS Sports app to watch the end of Pittsburgh/Baltimore. I was having this issue during the conference championships too. Hulu seems to barely have live sports. Sometimes, it buffers. Sometimes, it goes black. My solution is that I’m going to cancel Hulu today and move on to another streaming service. If this crap happens tonight, I’ll lose my temper. They’ve raised rates multiple times since I’ve had them and the quality has progressively gotten worse.

EDIT: Google “Hulu CBS problems.” You and I are far from the only ones experiencing this.

 

[masterbouncer]

I think this is more related to Hulu than to your equipment/inet connection, they might have not sufficient capacity to supply a bigger amount of streamers (server overloaded or similar) for such events when a lot of customers stream the same content over the same server

 

[Kontradiction]

I think this is more related to Hulu than to your equipment/inet connection, they might have not sufficient capacity to supply a bigger amount of streamers (server overloaded or similar) for such events when a lot of customers stream the same content over the same server

Yup. And you would think the profits derived from the rate increases would immediately get invested R&D to address that issue, but nope. Most people can live with rate increases if they’re given a superior product. That isn’t the case here.

 

[scout]

I had the same problem. Needed to download the CBS Sports app to watch the end of Pittsburgh/Baltimore. I was having this issue during the conference championships too. Hulu seems to barely have live sports. Sometimes, it buffers. Sometimes, it goes black. My solution is that I’m going to cancel Hulu today and move on to another streaming service. If this crap happens tonight, I’ll lose my temper. They’ve raised rates multiple times since I’ve had them and the quality has progressively gotten worse.

EDIT: Google “Hulu CBS problems.” You and I are far from the only ones experiencing this.

I've had good success with Fubol. Sports (national games/Pitt&Baltimore) are on as well as MNF. I get local tv and tape network series. Cable sucks, would be interested in other alternatives.

 

[DarrylS]

Yup. And you would think the profits derived from the rate increases would immediately get invested R&D to address that issue, but nope. Most people can live with rate increases if they’re given a superior product. That isn’t the case here.

It seems often when they have the opportunity to upgrade their service, they spend money on compensating those who already get compensated handsomely... not just for Hulu, but in all aspects our economy.

 

[SONS_OF_BELICHICK]

If your tv is not too old, you can download Dofu sports streaming app on your phone and then project (Cast) the game from your phone to your tv.

 

[Fuzz]

Since you're local, you can also watch it for free on the Yahoo Sports or NFL apps.

 

[Rob0729]

It's funny. I have had more problems with Xfinity than streaming. My Xfinity was locking up during the Browns' game. So I actually went to Paramount+ to watch the game. The picture was better. The only problem was that there was a big delay on the streaming. So much so that Paramount+ was still streaming the Cowboys' game.

I like watching on streaming better than cable, but it sucks coming to the GDT because people watching the cable broadcast see the play a good 10-20 seconds faster than streaming. Amazon seems to be the only streamer who comes close.

As for Hulu, I have never watched a game on that service.

 

[Bill Lee]

Yesterday around 4:00 PM had a similar problem and could not watch any football at all. This morning I checked my internet speed and it revealed it was "very fast", 177.3 MBPS Download and 10.4 MBPS Upload ( no idea what this means).

This is just measuring the data rate between your device and some arbitrary point in the internet, typically a sever operated by whomever wrote the speed test you are using. The speed is more than enough. The number I see most often is 6 MBPS per HDTV stream, so 177.3 MBPS can support almost 30 HDTV streams at once.

Have tried the external antenna and instead of picking up towers 12 miles away it was partially picking up Boston TV towers, which failed as well.

I've gone down this path successfully, and would just say it's not something you want to try to pull out your backside at the last second. There are some web sites that you can use to try to figure out how useful an antenna would be, how big an antenna you need, etc but it'd take several days if not more to try to sort out a solution for you.

Without a lot of technical jargon, which I will forget & not understand anyways, any suggestions as to how to make this better?? I do not want issues tonite...

Are you watching on a computer/laptop? Smart TV? TV with external box (Roku, etc?)?

There is some merit in the old "restart it and try again" idea. Why? Because Hulu itself is hosted on one of countless computers out in the "cloud" and when you restart your device chances are you will connect to a different one of those computers, hopefully one that is working better.

Of course if they are truly overloaded you may not connect at all, then it's time for FM 98.5 The Sports Hub with Zo and Bob Socci. Don't laugh, I've had power outages during games, and my good old portable battery powered radio did what it was designed to do thirty years ago. I've also driven the car out of the garage to the driveway, fired up the heater and seat warmer, and tuned in 98.5 during a power outage.

 

[Rob0729]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you can watch this on the ESPN app even if you do not have cable. If you are an ESPN subscriber through another app, I think you can still gain access to the ESPN app through a login.

 

[TheRainMaker]

Hulu sucks.

 

[Bill Lee]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you can watch this on the ESPN app even if you do not have cable. If you are an ESPN subscriber through another app, I think you can still gain access to the ESPN app through a login.

I think so:

Watching live ESPN channels still will require a paid TV subscription, whether from cable, satellite, or a live TV streaming service. The app acts as a gatekeeper by requiring users to sign in with their TV provider account to enable live viewing.

Ref: Everything You Need to Know About ESPN+ | Digital Trends

So you should be able to log in to the espn app using whatever valid tv provider credentials you have that has espn in their package, and it should let you in.

If this works, you can see if espn works better than hulu.

 

[DarrylS]

Thanks for the advice, fortunately HULU worked well last night and did not miss any part of that great win..