Hulu Is Testing An Ad-Free ‘Watch Party’ Function For All Your Quarantine Viewing Needs
By Hoai-Tran Bui/May 28, 2020 12:30 pm EST
Variety reports that Hulu is catering to all the friends who are socially distancing amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic with a new Hulu Watch Party feature, the first social feature for the streaming service. The Watch Party feature, which Hulu is beginning to test starting today, will allow viewers to watch TV shows or movies together and interact in a chatroom of up to eight people.
While watching, viewers can communicate in the chat window on the righthand side. Viewers also have the ability to control their own playback without impacting the group. And anyone who falls behind (or just has a poor internet connection) can rejoin the party by hitting a button in the chat window marked “click to catch up.”
Only a select number of titles will have the Watch Party feature — though Hulu says it will be in the “thousands.” The feature will also work on PC and Mac computers via Hulu-compatible browsers, with no plug-in or extension required.
But there are a lot of caveats to this feature that make it a bummer — it seems like it will only be offered to those subscribed to the $11.99 ad-free monthly package. While Hulu seems to be rolling out this feature to encourage people to subscribe to the higher-tier package, it feels like the least they could do during lockdown is offer this one for the rest of us lower-tier masses. Still Hulu is the first major streaming platform to actually work in a co-viewing experience into its UX — the Netflix Party plug-in (which Hulu Watch Party is clearly modeled off of) is unaffiliated with Netflix, while the Startup Scener has Netflix and HBO covered.
