Thank you for sharing the complexity of your back end data operations.
As a user of Hulu Live I barely understood the details of your migration. But I got the general idea. There is clearly a lot going on technologically that viewers never see or know anything about. So the article was very interesting to me and I appreciate the time and effort you devoted to it.
So, perhaps someone from Hulu has already written on a subject near and dear to my heart: the horrible problems you have with Hulu Live. Because it seems no one from Hulu is ever willing to talk about the problem, explain it in layman’s terms and then explain what exactly is in the way of fixing it.
- Random freezing of picture and sound. Usually for a few seconds and then it starts up again (This is not a user problem. There is nothing wrong with the user’s configuration or bandwidth. The buffering is 100% on Hulu’s end). Sometimes it goes away for long periods. Other times it happens every few minutes. No discernible pattern to interruptions to the signal.
- Loss of resolution. The HD picture quality will degrade to lower than 4:3 SD quality. Fuzzy and unwatchable. Given enough time, sometimes the quality comes back to quasi-HD quality.
- Starting commercials before the actual start of the commercial break, down-cutting the actual programming by 3 to 5 seconds. I see this on MSNBC all the time.
- Choppy audio that would show as an on/off waveform on an oscilloscope, where the off cycle was milliseconds. But missing audio even for a few milliseconds causes distortion and makes the audio un-listenable.
Now, I know Hulu has devoted a lot of time lately to cosmetics. And I know Hulu has left Live TV in a BETA status for many months. But Hulu does charge full price for a service offering less than a high quality signal.
A lot of the ideas and suggestion I can wait for Hulu to have the time and budget to implement. I can live with no channel numbers or being unable to get rid of categories I am not interested in watching. Kids programming being the #1 answer. You’ll get around to implementing the needed changes in due time.
The issues I have described above are strictly with Hulu Live. All previously recorded shows and movies look and sound great and stream without constant buffering.
Without putting your job at risk or revealing unflattering company secrets, can you tell us, first, is Hulu management aware of the issues I have enumerated above? And then what is the cause, what is the solution and what is the timeline? And who can we blame for architecting such a poorly performing system in the first place.
Many people on the Hulu forums believe Hulu won’t fix the problem due to the cost. YIt is believed you know what needs to be done, but management is not willing to fund a permanent solution. I don’t know if that is true or not, it’s just one of the things your customers are saying because they see no improvement in the signal quality.
Hulu has a great line up of channels at a fair price. But the technical problems are still very bad and it is costing Hulu both customers and goodwill.
I hope you or one of your co-workers will choose to answer my questions and not stonewall.
Regards,
Norm