Tag: continuous play

There is one feature that I’ve always expected to see on Hulu, but finally figured out that it didn’t exist. Let’s say you want to watch Naruto Shippunden, but you don’t want to just watch a couple of episodes. You want to watch all of it. From episode 1 season 1 to episode 126 season 4. You had to add each individual episode to your queue in order. That’s 126 clicks! More if you count scrolling through episodes and seasons. I’m no UI expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s bad design. Where is the “Select All” button at?!

Well, it looks like Hulu was aware of this flaw and has recently fixed it. Continuous play makes it simple to watch sequential episodes of any show on Hulu. No need to add each episode to your queue. Just find the show you like and click turn Continuous Play on. You can click “Show Playlist” so see what episodes are included, hover “Next Video to see what’s coming next, and (when the credits start rolling) click “Next Video” to skip to the next video.

Now on every video player on our site, you’ll see a new Continuous Play bar under the video player. On the far right is a dropdown that shows what playlist of videos Continuous Play is working from. For now, there are three primary types of playlists. One is Your Queue, mentioned earlier. The next class is Collections, which have always been part of our site, but which now play continuously. The last type of playlist is more of whichever title you’re watching. If you’re watching a bit from Saturday Night Live, the playlist will be “Saturday Night Live” and will play more sketches from SNL in sequential order. If you’re watching an episode of 30 Rock, Continuous Play will play more episodes of 30 Rock in sequential order.

This feature will make it even easier to waste hours of your life. You click play once and disappear for as long as you like.

What do you think about Continuous Play? Were you craving it as much as I was? Leave a comment.