Hulu + Disney+ Unified Streaming Experience Launches for Eligible Bundle Plan Members Now!

Customers who subscribe to The Disney Bundle can now view Hulu content within the Disney+ app. This is currently limited to Hulu’s core library and does not include add-ons like Hulu with Live TV.

Eligible subscribers will see a Hulu tile at the top of the Disney+ home page. It sits alongside the longstanding Marvel, National Geographic, and Star Wars tiles. You’ll also find Hulu movies and shows sprinkled throughout the Disney+ app, of course, and Hulu content will appear in search.

The combined “Hulu on Disney+” setup solves a rarely-mentioned problem; Hulu’s app sucks. It’s slow, it doesn’t receive proper software support, and it’s unreliable on some hardware platforms (particularly Android TV). On the other hand, this merged app experience may be the catalyst for Disney’s password-sharing crackdown. Both Hulu and Disney+ forbid password sharing in their respective subscriber agreements, though this mandate has yet to be enforced at scale.

Oddly, Hulu user profiles are not carried over to Disney+. Now might be a good time for families to set up parental controls in the Disney+ app, as the addition of Hulu’s library greatly increases the amount of adult content on Disney+.

The Walt Disney Company

Hulu originally launched in 2007, meaning that it’s four times older than Disney+. The two streaming platforms couldn’t be any different. In a conversation with The Verge, Disney states that it had to reformat Hulu video for Disney+ and migrate a total of 100,000 non-video assets, hence the long wait for a combined app experience.

Various Hulu features, including Live TV integration, are currently absent from the Disney+ app. Though I should note that Hulu is exclusive to the U.S. and Japan. Much of Hulu’s video library has already been adapted to Disney+ for viewers in other regions, so it’s safe to assume that the aforementioned “non-video assets” posed the biggest challenge when merging these apps.

This combined app has been a long time coming. The Walt Disney Company expressed interest in merging these apps several years ago, but it had to buy Comcast’s stake in Hulu before making any big moves.

Customers who subscribe to The Disney Bundle will now see a Hulu tile on the Disney+ home screen. We’re not sure how (or when) Disney will migrate other Hulu customers to the Disney+ app.

Source: The Walt Disney Company

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