Hulu Plus hits Xbox Live with complimentary first week

Hulu Plus, a "premium" offshoot of the standard Hulu service, arrives on Microsoft's Xbox Live today –– and for a full week, thanks to a new promotion deal, Hulu Plus is completely and totally free. (Translation: the window is open through May 6.) After Friday, users will pay the usual Hulu Plus rate of $7.99 per month, which more or less stacks up with Netflix prices.

Of course, that $7.99 comes on top of whatever fees you're already paying for your Xbox Live membership. For the uninitiated: Hulu Plus, which launched last year, has a far larger library than regular old Hulu, including a range of movies, and a bunch of television shows. So how does Hulu Plus on Xbox Live stack against the original version?

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In a less than complimentary review of the Xbox-bound Hulu, Chris Kohler of Wired calls the application "unfinished," and another term not appropriate for use in a family newspaper. "There’s also no search feature for Hulu’s catalog of clips, as I discovered when I tried to find a collection of the Saturday Night Live 'What Up With That?' sketches," Kohler writes.

"I eventually had to add them to my queue on my PC, and they were then viewable on the Xbox," he adds. Moreover, Kohler points out, Hulu Plus, no matter which platform you use to access it, is a paid subscription service, "still supported by advertising. So your favorite TV episodes will be broken up by frequent commercials."

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