The History of Hulu’s Watch Parties
Hulu first introduced its watch party feature in May 2020, during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, it was the first large streaming provider to offer it as an inbuilt feature, rather than via an unofficial third-party extension.
With people unable to go to theaters or watch things in person with friends, virtual watch parties are the next best thing to viewing things collaboratively.
At first, the feature was only available to subscribers of Hulu’s no-ads plan. It then became available to everyone for a limited ten-day period to coincide with the launch of season two of Hulu’s original show Pen15 on September 18.
Hulu then tested the watch party feature with live streams during the November election news coverage.
Now, watch parties are available to everyone, whether you have an ad-supported plan or not.
How to Use Hulu’s Watch Parties
You can use the new watch party feature across thousands of on-demand Hulu titles. This includes Hulu original content like The Happiest Season, to films and shows from other distributors like Golden Girls and Family Guy.
To start a watch party, look for the representative icon on each title’s details page. You can then share this link with up to seven other Hulu subscribers (who must all be age 18 or older).
During a watch party, the content plays alongside a chat box. Here, you can talk in real-time with everyone else in the watch party. You can even use emojis!
You control the playback individually. That means if you need to pause for a bathroom break, or your internet is struggling to keep up, the content continues to play for everyone else. On your return, you can choose to watch from where you paused or catch up with everyone else.
That’s a bit different to how most watch parties work, where you can control playback for everyone. Hulu’s approach seems like a better and less invasive way of doing it.
