Problems With Hulu Live TV app on Apple TV

Hulu doesn’t appear to understand app development for the Apple TV. Not one of my other streaming service apps fails like Hulu. It’s ridiculous. Audio stops regularly. If we switch channels on live TV, on the newly selected channel, there will be no audio. Video will begin to stutter and stay that way until we quit the app and start it over. We have gigabit fiber to the house that’s consistently running at 900+ mbps. It’s not the Apple TV if every other app streams perfectly fine.

We’re cancelling Hulu. Nothing resolves its issues. We’re going back to YouTube TV.

Yeah, searching on “Hulu AppleTV app problems” turns up pretty much the same stuff going back as far as 5 years. Add that to the abysmal lack of basic live tv features like Previous Channel, which people have also been requesting for years… pretty good indication that Hulu has no interest in making the AppleTV app work.

Hulu is such an easy choice for live tv during football season because of the Disney/ESPN bundle, but I’m so tired of dealing with the same issues and having to reboot the device multiple times a day. It’s like an old joke about windows 95. Next season I’m trying any and every other live tv service to find one that cares enough about AppleTV support to maintain a professional app.

The audio continuing after app crashes problem is so severe that it leaks out into the OS UI sometimes - I’ve had running audio that continued to play even after backing out of the Hulu app altogether, in the main app grid of the AppleTV! Sometimes I have to start running video in a different app to finally clear the Hulu audio stream. At that point any visit back to Hulu usually goes haywire fast, so I just reboot the device.

I wish Apple’s app screening process covered really flakey quality issues like this, if they rejected the app, I’m guessing it would get Hulu’s attention and get it fixed.

lol it’s not Hulu, Apple Apologist. It’s APPLE TV. Over the last couple months, this is constantly happening on Hulu, Netflix, Prime…Everything.

And why do I know Apple TV is the root cause and not the App, or my internet, etc…is because as soon as unplug Apple TV and go to Hulu thru my smart tv interface (same tv), it streams perfect. And sure, I can dump Apple TV, but people spend $300 on these things, and I swear my Roku 4k that I used for 3 years prior, or even my brown cable box gave me less issues. This is played out. Apple, stop charging a fortune for your products, because your R&D is now extremely sub par…and it was the only reason you could charge these prices to begin with. Time to go back to the basics….

Agree. Got several apps on Apple TV and it is only the Hulu app that gives us problems. I got a firetv stick on another tv and Hulu runs perfectly fine on it. Since it is only the Hulu app, only on Apple TV, all other apps have no issues, it’s pretty clear the problem resides with Hulu and failure to fix their Apple TV app.

I've been experiencing several similar issues with Hulu Live TV on Apple TV. In particular item 3 in the original post - video stops playing - audio continues (about 5 or so seconds afetr video stops). There are more than a handful of other annoying issues with the Hulu Live TV app. I've also done all the restarts and software updates and de-install re-installs; so it has boiled down to either reset the Apple TV or get rid of Hulu. Downloading the apps and signing in again will be a bit of a pain but I plan to start with resetting the Apple TV. I don't use half the apps anyway so the unused apps won't be reinstalled.

We need to be able to use a streaming platform and software easily and reliably. This kind of constant annoyance is nuts.

I’ve had the same issue with my Apple TV and Hulu. Interestingly, when I use the remote app on my iPhone, I don’t have the issue. I wonder if it’s a remote issue.

Hi FuskieBP,

As you have already updated, restarted, removed and redownloaded the app as well as work with the app developer, your next step will be to contact Apple Support. You can do so here Get Support.

Take care.

I’m having the identical problems (regularly as of late) and have reinstalled the Hulu app multiple times and rebooted my router. I had assumed the issue was with Hulu. However, I also have a Roku and have not experienced any of these issues. Because it works with Roku, I’m here hoping to find a solution.

Agree, having exact same issues with 3 different apple tv and Hulu live. Also been in IT world for over 20 yrs and something definitely wrong with Hulu live with no issues with any other streaming service. I had Youtube.tv before Hulu and did not experience issues like this. I feel issue is on Hulu side and they are not smart enough to figure it out. Hire better developers Hulu and fix this issue. Im about to switch back to Youtube.tv

It’s not Hulu, it’s Apple tv, as I set up an Xfinity flex streaming platform and was playing a program that was being recorded and played simultaneously, Hulu would be buggy and crash, yet the Hulu app on Xfinity worked perfectly, as did on my MacBook Pro. It like the Apple TV doesn’t have enough ram to process live Hulu stream.

Yes, I found the solution in YouTubeTV. Much as I really really really didn’t want to give Alpha any of my money on top of all my information they have, the app has a reasonable UI with a minimal number of annoying non-standard conventions, and runs reliably. It isn’t in the condition of a Ruby on Rails app that is still on a warm server but hasn’t been maintained in 8 years. Like Hulu’s Live app, in case that wasn’t obvious as my comparison.

I have seen a couple of comments that YouTube TV is worse. I switched off Hulu Live for all the same reasons expressed here and have had zero issues. I think it’s great.

I have my own issue with Hulu Live. I upgraded to the "no ads' tier today for $70+. Everything's fine on my iPad and iPhone, but... while I do see "Live' in the left navigation of my Apple TV, it jumps straight into CNN and won't let me access the channel menu (no matter what I do). Can't find it. Any ideas?