Hulu on Reddit this week announced that it will begin rolling out support for 60 frames per second live streams on its "Hulu With Live TV" cord-cutting service, launching in time for viewers to stream the Olympics and March Madness. Hulu said it was aware that 60fps streaming was "one of the most-requested features" by its viewers, leading to this week's announcement (via Cord Cutters News).
The company explained that the update will see a launch in phases, and began yesterday with Phase 1, including the following channels now supporting 60fps on Hulu With Live TV: CNN, CNN International, HLN, TNT, TBS, TCM, TruTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, all SHOWTIME channels, "about half" of available FOX affiliates, all NBC affiliates, and New England Channel News.
Due to the dependencies required to enable 60fps, we’ll be rolling it out in phases to get you these higher-quality streams as quickly as possible. By offering our live streams at this frame rate, our goal is to provide a significantly more immersive viewing experience for Live TV. You’ll notice the difference most when watching sports or news, so we’re excited to have this in time for the 2018 Winter Olympics and March Madness (NBC and Turner channels, respectively).
Hulu noted that individual affiliates "may temporarily revert back" to 30fps streams when adjusting for internet speeds, giving viewers a more stable experience. Phase 1 will include Hulu apps on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Xbox One, Fire TV, Samsung Tizen TV, and Nintendo Switch.
The company hasn't yet indicated when Phase 2 will begin, or what channels/devices will be part of that rollout. Later this year, Hulu will also be launching a redesigned user interface across its on-demand and live services, including a new Live TV guide. For the Live TV section of Hulu, the latest numbers put the service at 450,000 paid subscribers, beating out YouTube TV (300,000), but still trailing DirecTV Now (1 million) and Sling TV (nearly 2 million).
Top Rated Comments
I tried DirectTV Now and the CBS app subscriptions... both had garbage video quality (overly compressed, jittery). Hulu knows how to get it done.
Can't wait for them to start streaming some shows / channels in 4k!
So basically this is a gimmick at best. Even broadcasting at 29.97 most Footage is shot at 23.98 so they can play it back at whatever they want but it won’t change the look any because it wasn’t shot with that many frames.
The only time 60 FPS makes a difference is when you are talking Footage that’s created at 60 such as video game footage and maybe some sports, I’m not sure what they shoot at. Content created under won’t see any benefit to a higher frame rate.