At Hulu, we sweat a lot of things: details, pixels, and especially, user experience. Today, we’re excited to show off the results of that sweat: meet our new and improved Hulu Plus experience for iPad.
We’ve redesigned the app from the ground up, focusing on discoverability, efficiency, and our overall user experience. There is such a wealth of great content out there, an embarrassment of riches in this golden age of television – and we know how overwhelming all of these choices can feel. I mean, our Hulu Plus queues each have hundreds of episodes waiting for our viewing pleasure, and sometimes the hardest part of the day is making the choice between “Family Guy” and “One Life to Live” (don’t judge). So we’ve really focused on developing several new ways to make your favorite shows, and your favorite new shows you never even knew existed, easier to find.
With the latest Hulu Plus experience on iPad, when you see an image of an unfamiliar show, movie or episode, touch it to trigger our new discover panel. If you tap a show, we’ll show you the first, next, or latest episode to watch, depending on your viewing history with that show. If you tap an episode, we’ll give you a summary and some info on that episode to help you decide whether this is something for you. And if you’d rather continue looking, a simple swipe right or left will let you browse collections and seasons effortlessly, like looking through that crate of records or a shoe box of the most awesome baseball cards a week’s allowance could buy, except all much more 2013.
Now imagine you’re in the middle of watching an episode of one of your favorite all-time shows, but have a burning desire to multitask and look for something else to watch, but at the same time don’t want to stop the video for fear of not finding out who Cartman’s dad is. Touch the video and pinch your fingers together to minimize what you’re watching. The video will continue playing and you can carry on with using the app to do anything else you’d like while it does. As soon as you start to play something else, the minimized player will disappear.
And if you’re watching a show you already know and love, like “New Girl”, and you’re desperately trying to find that one single episode where Schmidt says something funny (which is just about every episode…but I digress), just touch the image of a season or episode and navigate episode descriptions easier than ever before.
We’ve added a ton of other goodies like editorial curated collections, inline playback of clips, and improved search (tip: hit “enter” after searching). We can sit here all day and tell you why we’re so excited about the new and improved Hulu Plus app on iPad, but why don’t you download the app and see for yourself?
Happy watching – it’s an honor to innovate on your behalf! Please let us know what you think of the app.
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Hi Linda, I’m sorry to hear about the frustration. You can always contact us at ( http://www.hulu.com/support ). That, and some help articles are also found through the “Help” button at the bottom of Hulu pages. Thanks, Gabe, Hulu Support
I just signed up for your free week trial and I am already very frustrated with the lack of any contact info for questions I have. Are you opposed to customer service? Why is there no way to contact you or am I missing it somewhere?
It’s much prettier, but why can’t I have ‘queue’ as a button along the quick link task bar at the bottom of the screen? I want a quick direct link to my queue, please.
Speaking of details, is there any way to queue up entries you’ve searched for? Am I missing something? Tapping on a search results starts playing it immediately instead of popping up its info, and there’s no way to add it to your queue once it starts playing. It seems like search results should first pop open the detail view, just like any other list, and more importantly in a search because you may not know exactly what you’re tapping.
Also, the title of the currently playing video shows up in the new minimized view, but not when you tap to get the overlay controls in full screen? Why not show it there as well?