The streaming service Hulu has had a problem when it comes to their endings. They keep cutting off the last 8 minutes of their shows. When the app crashes, Roku fans despair.
With 5 minutes left, Hulu is ending the episode and going to the next one.
Chelsea Swann, AP Capstone, and AP lit teacher and sponsor of Arts Ambassador at OCSA, has had this exact problem. She recounts watching Only Murders in the Building on Hulu, on her Roku. “…at the end of the first episode, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez’s characters are opening a box to see what’s inside of it. You see Steve Martin pull out the bubble wrap. He asks Selena ‘Why would somebody do this?’. You can see in the corner that the thing… was counting down the next episode will play in 3, 2, 1.”
The next episode then started, five minutes before the end of the episode. She had been unaware it had cut off. She now has to go back to the last five minutes of the 3 episodes she watched that night.
A feature that is prized on many streaming services, being able to automatically go to the next episode, without having to get out the episode manually to pick, is essentially useless on Hulu. It comes a whole 8 minutes before the episode ends, and if you don’t click quick enough, it will automatically go to the next one. Customers of Hulu have contacted them asking about how to fix it, and Hulu never answered. Many resorted to going on reddit to make sure they weren’t the only one with the problem. It was there, from other customers, that they had to resort to get answers.
One such customer asked on reddit, username “imaximus1570” asks if anyone’s experienced this “… I occasionally experience the show going black in the middle of the scene… and the next episode starts playing. This usually happens when the current episode has 6-7 minutes left.”. She gets multiple responses to this, saying. This most effects anyone watching Hulu using Roku. Neither Roku nor Hulu have addressed it. Though it has become more known this year, the problem, according to redditors, has persisted for years.
There’s also the problem of Hulu crashing for Roku users. Under the same thread of username “”imaximus1570”, username “AutomatedTomatoes” posts, “Hulu goes black and then the app crashes. You call and they tell you to clear your cache and reboot your router, but that doesn’t help.”
Hulu says to clear cache – one problem with that. As fellow redditors/customers of Hulu comment below the post, Roku users don’t have the ability to clear cache, therefore no ability to fix the issue. They have to find, if even available to them, a separate device to watch it on. Though the post was made in September, the problem still exists today.
The problem doesn’t stop at Hulu. Ms. Swan goes on to say that the live T.V. streaming service, Sling, has crashed every 2-3 days, causing her to have to reboot her Roku, and miss part of shows like Shark Tank with no way to rewatch it. It is the sincere hope that Roku and these streaming services will come together and address these problems soon to satiate their frustrated customers.
