Hulu\’s Roku App Is So Bad That I Have to Unsubscribe

I\’ve been using Hulu since 2008. And although there are still plenty of shows on Hulu that I love, like The Bears, Bob\’s Burgers, and What We Do in the Shadows, it\’s time to stop giving them my money.

What are the problems with the Hulu app

At first glance, the Hulu app on Roku looks and acts like any other streaming app. You have a menu on the left, and most of the screen is taken up by large thumbnails of the various shows and movies the service wants you to watch. Scroll down a bit, and you\’ll find a \”Continue Watching\” tab for all the programs you haven\’t finished.

The problems occur when you\’re watching a TV show. I recently queued up Only Murders in the Building and began watching the latest episode. But, as soon as the shot rang out, the episode ended and the next show in my queue (The Great) began. I was confused—was this the end of the episode? When I returned to the show page for Only Murders, I noticed that there was a small bar indicating that the progress hadn\’t been filled yet; there were still five minutes left.

This happens often, whether it\’s The Simpsons or One Punch Man, which means I have to be careful that the \”end\” of an episode by Hulu is actually the end. Sometimes, it\’s obvious, and I stop recording right away, but sometimes, it\’s not. I have to look through everything I\’ve watched recently to make sure I\’ve actually watched it all the way through.

This is the biggest problem, but it\’s not the most frequent. Another problem I\’ve noticed, which occurs in almost every show, is how an episode ends if it doesn\’t progress.

When an episode is about to end, the screen dims a little, and a countdown timer appears in the upper right corner. It\’s a little circle with a number in the middle that tells you how many seconds are left in the current episode. This is fine when there are only 15 or 30 seconds left before the show ends and the credits start rolling.

But for every other episode, the countdown timer starts too early, and when I say too early, I mean more than 300 seconds. That\’s a full five minutes, and a lot can happen during that time. I get stuck watching important scenes with a screen with a big timer, and there\’s nothing I can do about it. I\’ve tried exiting and returning to the episode, rewinding while it\’s playing, or even fast-forwarding a few seconds to see if I can skip what prompts the timer to appear. Nothing works.

While searching for solutions, I found that I\’m not alone. My friends report the same problems, and there are Reddit threads complaining about the same thing. So, the problem isn\’t my account, my device, or my TV.

Is there anything Hulu subscribers can do

I\’ve tried to fix this Hulu error in several ways, such as signing out and signing back in or uninstalling, but the problem persists, which points to a problem with the app itself. Hulu needs to fix this on its end, but given the number of users reporting this problem over the past several months, the company doesn\’t seem particularly interested in doing anything about it.

One solution is to watch Hulu through the Disney+ app, but that requires a subscription to both Hulu and Disney+. You shouldn\’t need to subscribe to another service just to watch the service you\’re already paying for. I also find it annoying because Disney+ doesn\’t keep a record of what I\’ve watched before. Luckily, I track what I watch on a separate site called Tracked, but not everyone will want to do that.

Problems with streaming apps are nothing new. The Amazon Prime app is infamous for its unfriendly layout. And here at MakeUseOf, we\’ve written about removing items from your Disney+ \”Continue Watching\” list and how to remove them on Netflix because it\’s not as easy as it should be.