Since Disney+ launched last year, and the company started offering a bundle that included it, ESPN+ and Hulu, the latter looked a bit out of place. But Hulu is about to get a makeover, and it’ll look a lot more like Disney+ and ESPN+.
The makeover is designed to make you want to binge more, and to look more in-line with Disney’s other streaming products.
Vertical scrolling is in
Much like Netflix and other streaming services, Hulu is going to be getting vertical scrolling. This will allow you to scroll vertically through different collections. Then you can scroll horizontally within a collection. Allowing you to find what you want, a bit faster.
If you’ve used Disney+ or ESPN+, then you’re going to know exactly what to expect here.
Hulu is going to be moving categories like TV, Movies and Sports to the master navigation view. The reason for this is to give viewers an easier way to find what they are looking for in fewer clicks.
This makeover is also going to change the size of the show titles a bit. New shows and movies are going to appear in a larger tile. This is meant to catch your attention. The tiles in your “Keep Watching” section are going to be smaller, so you can see more titles at one time.
Finally, Hulu is going to be updating its recommendation engine. Relying more on the help of actual people than just algorithms. This should bring you more titles that you will actually want to watch, based on other people with similar tastes, rather than just those that the algorithm seems to like.
Hulu’s makeover is still a few months out
Even though Hulu announced this makeover today, the changes won’t be coming for a few more months.
The makeover is going to come to Roku and tvOS first, it appears. And then gradually come to the other platforms that Hulu is available on. It’s a good thing to start with Roku, as it is the biggest platform for Hulu right now, and Apple’s tvOS is likely not far behind.
There’s no firm date as to when this UI is going to be rolling out. Just over the “next few months”. So it could arrive in time for the fall. But we’ll have to wait and see. It could be next year before it actually arrives on Android TV. It was years before they updated the Android TV to its current layout.