Hulu Plus isn’t as well known as Netflix, but it’s a great way to watch TV shows, movies, and other video from a wide variety of sources. Current TV shows are well represented, but there are plenty of old favorites as well. Like Netflix, Hulu Plus streams video to your NOOK Tablet.
Note
Hulu Plus lets you view movies as well as television shows, but it has a very limited selection of them. Netflix is far better for movie watching than Hulu Plus.
Hulu offers both free and paid services, but on the NOOK Tablet, you can only use the for-pay version. At press time, it costs $7.99 per month, and it gives you a wider range of TV and video, including streaming access to full seasons and past seasons of TV shows. (The non-pay version, which you can watch on the Web, typically offers single episodes or clips.)
To watch TV or video on your NOOK Color using Netflix, go to the Apps screen, and then tap the Hulu Plus icon. You’ll come to a login screen. Tap in your login information, or if you haven’t yet subscribed to Hulu Plus, tap the icon to sign up. You can also subscribe to Hulu Plus by heading to www.hulu.com on a computer’s browser.
Tip
If you decide not to subscribe to Hulu Plus, you can still watch a small selection of video. Tap the Free Gallery icon when you launch Hulu Plus.
Once you’ve signed up and logged in you come to a screen with these options:
TV. Shows you a selection of TV shows to watch.
Movies. Shows you the movies you can watch.
Queue. A list of TV shows, movies, and other video that you’ve lined up for later viewing.
History. Lists what you’ve watched on Hulu Plus. You can rewatch a show from here as well.
More. Gives you access to your account information, a search tool, a favorites list, and a logout screen.
At the bottom of the screen you see two buttons: a Back button for returning to where you just were, and a Menu button that brings up the same set of options as when you tap the More button. So why have the Menu button? So that when you’re in another part of Hulu Plus—browsing TV shows, for example—you can quickly get to those options.
Tap the TV or Movies icon, and you come to a list of TV shows or movies to watch. At the very top of the screen are navigation buttons for TV, Movies, Queue, and More. Just below those icons you see a highlighted TV show or movie, and then beneath that all the movies and TV shows you can watch.
Note
Shows and episodes sometimes expire on Hulu Plus so you can’t watch them after a certain date. If that’s the case, you see a notice next to the show.
In the list, you find not just full TV shows and movies, but also trailers and clips. If you’d like to only see the full shows and movies, or only trailers and clips, tap the All Videos button and you can choose which you want to see.
When you tap a movie or TV show, the NOOK’s orientation changes to landscape. If you tap a TV show, you may see an ad or two before it starts, and sometimes while you’re watching as well. (Don’t try to fast-forward through the ads—you can’t do it.) Then the TV or movie starts playing, and you briefly see a series of controls and information onscreen. To make the controls go away, tap the screen. To make them appear again, tap the screen again. Control the volume using your NOOK’s volume control. And if you can’t hear even with the sound turned all the way up, use headphones or external speakers as described in the tip in Tip.
Here are the controls and information you’ll find:
Title. Displays the title of the movie or TV show.
Play/Pause. Plays the movie or TV show or pauses it.
Time elapsed. Shows how much time has elapsed.
Slider bar. Drag the bar and you move forward or back through the show. You can also tap to jump to a different spot in the video.
Time remaining. Shows how much time is left in the video.
Back. Takes you to the previous screen.
Options. Brings up a screen that lets you change the video quality of what you’re watching. You can choose from High, Medium, and Low. Generally, you should choose High, but if you’re having a problem with hiccups or other streaming video problems, choose Medium or Low, and see if that solves the problem.
When you’re browsing through TV and movies and you tap the down arrow next to any video, a series options appears. Tap the arrow, and here are your choices:
Watch. Starts playing the TV show or movie.
Queue. Adds it to your queue for later watching (Using the Queue and History List).
Video. Provides more details about the show or movie, including the name, date it was aired, network that aired it, episode number, and description. You can then watch the show from the screen that appears, put it in the queue, or see more information about the series, as described in the next bullet.
Series info. Takes you to a screen where you can tap buttons to see more episodes of the show, view clips of the show or movie, add the episode to your queue, and put it in your Favorites by tapping the heart button. If you tap the Episodes button, you’ll see more episodes of the show.
As you browse through TV and movies, they appear in what Hulu Plus calls Featured order, which means that Hulu determines the order in which they’re displayed. But if you tap the Featured arrow at upper left, you can display them in a different order—by most popular, recently added, alphabetical, by network (for TV shows), by studio (for movies), and so on.
Note
For legal and licensing reasons, you may not be able to view all the video choices on your NOOK Tablet that you can on the Web. So you may come across an occasional TV show that tells you that you’ll have to watch the show on the Web, not on your NOOK Tablet.
To search for a TV show or movie, tap the search icon and type in what you’re searching for. Then tap any results to watch or tap the arrow next to it to get more details.
