While internationally, general entertainment content has been available on Disney+ since early 2021, in the United States, things have been a little slower to happen, due to the existence of Hulu.   Recently, the Walt Disney Company began final negotiations to buy out Comcast’s 33% stake in the company, as part of a contract signed back in 2019 when Disney purchased 20th Century Fox.  With Hulu now under Disney’s control, the company is looking to make some significant changes to its streaming platforms.

This past week, Disney+ launched one of the biggest changes since it launched in 2019, the introduction of Hulu On Disney+ in the United States.   This new offering has been rolled out in beta to Disney Streaming Bundle subscribers before officially launching in the spring.

The introduction of Hulu On Disney+ brings content from Hulu into Disney+, like hit shows such “The Bear” and “Only Murders In The Building”, along with films such as “Prey” and “A Haunting In Venice”, onto the platform for Hulu subscribers. 

Unlike internationally, where the general entertainment Star hub was just incorporated into Disney+ for all subscribers, the launch of Hulu On Disney+ is much more complicated due to Hulu being an existing platform that is one of the original streaming services.  Merging the two platforms together was never going to be easy, hence why Hulu On Disney+ is in Beta mode right now, to help give Disney engineers more time to put the finishing touches in place, but also to let Disney+ subscribers in the US become more accustom to having general entertainment content within the platform. 

Disney Streaming engineers have been working on incorporating Hulu into Disney+ for years, and during a recent interview with Fast Company, Aaron LaBerge, the president and CTO of Disney Entertainment & ESPN, revealed why there’s a lot more to the beta than many would expect:

“While the launch of this will be a simple Hulu button in the [Disney Plus] app, the complexity underneath to deliver that to you has [required] a lot of work.  For example, the content libraries between Hulu and Disney Plus—over 70,000 pieces of content—were encoded differently. The playback output had different specifications. The metadata attached to each of those assets was different.”

And since Hulu is one of the oldest platforms, it was built at a different time, by another company, which multiple Hollywood studios owned, whereas Disney+ is a more modern platform built by Disney. 

“For example, in Hulu, a video asset has five pieces of art that describe the content.  It’s the cover art, the poster art, small thumbnail, large thumbnail, etc. In Disney Plus, there are 27 pieces of art attached, which allows you to do a bunch of different creative things.”

The super fast growth of Disney+ during the pandemic also resulted in some decisions being made to focus on the short-term, rather than the long-term impacts they might have.

 “Any platform decisions that would have been made to stabilize or standardize or operationalize things, it was like, ‘We need to grow as quickly as possible. What we’re doing now is going through and fixing those things.”

With the streaming wars going into a new period, where profitability is more important than subscriber growth, and people are starting to cut back on how many subscriptions they have, consumers are looking for more value and content.  Having studios run multiple streaming services is more expensive, and many studios, including Warner Brothers Discovery and Paramount, have begun merging their platforms.

“We live in a world where people have multiple subscriptions. They’re in Max, they’re in Netflix, they’re in Hulu, they’re in Disney Plus, they’re in Prime Video. And they don’t know what’s where. So we believe that for our content, putting it all in one place for you to easily find, applying personalization to recommend content you may like, and not having to send you into another app was really important.”

The introduction of Hulu On Disney+ is only the start of the changes on Disney+, as there are going to be some more changes coming, including the addition of more full-blown hubs for the many content providers that make up Hulu,  such as FX or Nick Jr, making it easier to find the content you want to see.  This has been a long-running issue that has faced Disney+ users internationally, as having thousands of titles in one hub can make shows and films hard to find. So, hopefully, these changes will be global.

Currently, only Hulu subscribers can see the Hulu content within Disney+, but with the full launch in March, all Disney+ subscribers will be able to see the Hulu hub within the platform, which will likely help boost subscribers into upgrading their plans to include Hulu.

Disney is also planning on integrating profiles across Hulu and Disney+, to allow a subscriber to have one identity, because at the moment, they are completely separated.  Hence why no watchlists or viewing history from Hulu is available on Hulu on Disney+.  Though it doesn’t seem a high priority.

Jason Wong, Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology’s senior VP of product management said:

“There’s no way for us to physically link two different profiles and their interactions without sending the user through some sort of wizard where we’ve got to be like, ‘Is this you, or is this you?.  And we’re not looking to do that at this time.”

Over the next few months, many Disney+ subscribers will get used to seeing Hulu content within Disney+, making the transition much easier and we will likely see major changes in how this is marketed to audiences, as the beta launched without any advertising, which did cause some confusion among subscribers.

There are still many issues with the beta version of Hulu on Disney+, hopefully, the engineers are using this time to collect data and feedback from users on how to improve things.  Bringing together two different platforms is never easy, but the biggest jump has been made this week. Now it just has to navigate how to make it as smooth as possible.

Have you checked out Hulu on Disney+ yet?  Let us know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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