Hulu Plus Joins Apple TV Platform

Apple TV scored a nice victory on Tuesday as TV and movie streaming service Hulu Plus rolled out to the network. The move gives Apple TV users access to ad-supported TV episodes and a growing collection of movies for only $7.99 per month.

Apple TV customers can sign up for a free one-week Hulu Plus trial via their iTunes account.

The Hulu Plus setup includes the company’s full catalog of shows and movies, access to user queues which sync up with Hulu.com and access to movie and TV clips.

The service seems easy enough to use on Apple TV, featuring a top menu that provides Popular and Recommend items, a list of Recently Watched videos, TV, Movies, Trailers and Search.

The platform just like Hulu Plus for Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and other supported devices allows for scene skipping, pause and play capabilities and other basic viewing options.

Hulu Plus’ biggest problem still exists however, many TV shows are still met with the note:

“Web Only: We are currently unable to provide this show on your Apple TV due to content streaming restrictions. However, you can watch it from your computer’s web browser at Hulu.com. We’ll continue to work on clearing the streaming rights for your Apple TV.”

Hulu service has been marred by licensing agreement problems which has led content providers to ban much of their content from the services non-computer streaming services.

The biggest winner from this partnership is likely Apple TV which reported sales of 1.3 million set-top boxes in the recent quarter for a total of 4 million Apple TV units sold.

Should Apple unveil a new Apple TV later this year its new Hulu Plus partnership could ultimately prove very beneficial in terms of attracting new users.