Hulu with Live TV can now be streamed using web browsers on PC and Mac, expanding the service beyond the mobile devices and set-top boxes it’s already on. Live TV channels can be viewed using Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge browser, and Internet Explorer 11. Taking live TV to the browser is something that Hulu’s competitors — Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, YouTube TV, and DirecTV Now — have already done; Sling added the feature just over a week ago.
Don’t expect the most polished experience from Hulu at the moment. In a blog post, Hulu cautions that what customers will see beginning today is nothing close to the final live-TV-in-the-browser product it’s working towards. “Rather than wait until we’ve finalized our new web experience, we’re opening up a basic version to Hulu’s live TV plan subscribers so they can stream live TV via their browsers.” On-demand content is also available in addition to live feeds of channels.
The company describes this as “a very early” version that will improve over the coming months. “From point, click, and keyboard interactions, to responsive pages to fit all screen sizes; we are carefully considering all of the things that make building a web experience unique from living room and mobile devices.”
At the moment, only the primary profile associated with your Hulu account works with live TV on the web. So if multiple people in your home have their own profile, that might be one early inconvenience you run into. But there’s also more convenience elsewhere: Hulu lets you have multiple streams open at the same time with web browsers, which might prove beneficial for sports fans and is something you can’t exactly do with your smartphone or the Apple TV version of the app. Hulu is asking customers to provide feedback on the web experience as it evolves.