Comparing Crunchyroll and Hulu for anime streaming really opened my eyes

I finally got around to watching season 2 of that show everyone talks about. I tried it on Crunchyroll first because that's what my buddy uses, but the ads were driving me nuts, about 3 minutes every 10 minutes. Then I checked Hulu and the same episodes had way fewer breaks and better video quality. Has anyone else found that Hulu handles older anime libraries better than the dedicated streaming services?

2 comments

2 Comments

alex_hall915d ago

The ads thing is real, Crunchyroll's free tier is basically unwatchable now with how many breaks they cram in... but even their paid tier has some weird compression issues that Hulu doesn't seem to have for older shows. I've been rewatching some stuff from the early 2000s and the difference is night and day, Hulu's encoding just looks cleaner and less blocky during action scenes. Plus Hulu has that whole Funimation library mixed in now which gives them a bigger catalog for older dubs, especially stuff that never got a proper Blu-ray release. Crunchyroll's interface is pretty clunky too, trying to find the next season of a show often takes way too many clicks while Hulu just lists everything in order. Only downside is Hulu's rotation, some shows disappear for months at a time and you never know when they're coming back.

jenny_sullivan975d ago

Yeah the rotation thing is what got me too, I actually started keeping a spreadsheet of what I'm watching and where just so I don't lose track when Hulu pulls something.