Troubleshoot Streaming Issues on Hulu

Hulu is a great place to watch all your favorite movies, series, and TV shows all on your own time or preferred schedule. Sometimes, however, you’ll encounter some problems common to all video streaming sites. Though frustrating, you can troubleshoot streaming issues on Hulu easily.

Steps

Fixing Slow Video Playback

  1. Let the video buffer. This issue is commonly caused by slow internet speeds that the subscriber has. An easy remedy for this is to pause the video and allow it to buffer first. You’ll be able to see a gray bar on the video timeline progressing slowly; a sign that it’s already buffering.
    • Once the gray bar has reached the end of video timeline or gained at least a considerable distance from the start time, you can resume playing the video again.
  2. Watch the video in lower resolutions. If you don’t want to wait and buffer the video, you can simply lower its resolution to something your internet speed can accommodate.
    • Click the gear icon at the bottom-right corner of the video screen and select a much lower display from the pop up list.
  3. Disable the Flash Player’s hardware acceleration settings. If your video card doesn’t have the right codes to play the video smoothly, just disable the Flash Player’s hardware acceleration settings by right-clicking anywhere on the video screen and select “Settings” from the pop up menu.
    • Click the Display tab (first tab from the left with a monitor icon) and uncheck the “Hardware Acceleration” settings.

Fixing Issues of Videos Not Playing or Playback Controls Not Working

  1. Clear your browser’s history and cache. Open your browser’s menu and select “Clear History” from the menu list. This should clear the surfing cache and history of your browser.
    • This issue usually occurs when your browser has too much cached in surfing history and is unable to download additional data from the internet.
  2. Refresh the browser. Click your web browser’s “Refresh” button or simply press F5 on your keyboard to reload the web page. Your Hulu video should start playing as soon as you click the play button.
  3. Reinstall Flash Player. If the video still won’t play after clearing your browser’s history, you can try reinstalling the Flash Player. Visit the Adobe Flash Player download page (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/) and click the “Install Now” button to automatically download and reinstall the player on your web browser.
    • After the player has been reinstalled, reload the Hulu page (step 2) and see if the video will now play.

Fixing Issues of Videos Starting and Stopping Frequently

  1. Check the speed of your Internet. Open the Speed Test website (http://www.speedtest.net/) on a new browser tab and click the “Begin Test” button to start testing your Internet speed.
    • You need to have at least 1.5 MB of Internet speed. If your Internet speed is lower, you won’t be able to play videos smoothly or the videos won’t even play at all.
  2. Close other browser tabs or applications that are using your Internet bandwidth. If you’re watching other video streaming sites like YouTube on a different tab, close it to make more bandwidth space for your Hulu video to play more smoothly if you don’t meet the minimum requirement of 1.5 MB for bandwidth or internet speed.

Tips

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Sources and Citations

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