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Hulu’s $40 per month Live TV service launches, app hits App Store

Hulu's long-expected live TV service has gone official with today's launch of the Hulu Live TV app on App Store. Designed for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV, the software lets subscribers access the entire Hulu streaming library and more than 50 top live and on-demand channels, including FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, FX, NBCSN, FS1, History Channel and TNT.

In addition, live sports from top pro and college leagues, as well as regional sports networks, are available in certain areas. As a bonus, you'll get to stream national news with local feeds in select cities, popular kids shows, can’t-miss events and thousands of popular on-demand shows and movies from many of these channels.

You can choose to subscribe to Hulu with ad-supported Live TV for $40, or an additional $4 per month to get rid of advertising. Advanced features are available for extra money, such as Cloud DVR which lets you record live TV to watch your favorites on your own time, the ability to watch concurrent streams on multiple devices, as well as track and record games from your favorite teams with a My Teams feature.

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For an additional $15 per month, you can upgrade Cloud DVR functionality with up to 200 hours of cloud storage and the ability to fast-forward through commercials. Unlimited simultaneous viewing on as many screens as you want is an additional $15 per month. And if you purchase both add-ons, you'll save a cool $10.

As soon as you launch the app, you're greeted with all-new onboarding experience.

Firstly, you're asked to log in with your Hulu subscription credentials. The app cannot be used unless you're a subscriber. The setup procedure then takes you on a quick tour of the app's main features such as your personal live TV lineup, a My Stuff section and more.

Next, you can optionally tell the app about the kinds of shows you prefer to watch, helping it recommend content that's tailored to your needs. Finally, you can add your favorite shows and movies to the My Stuff section, or skip this step and set up these items at a later stage.

The app lets you create up to six personalized profiles so everyone in your household gets to enjoy their own personalized Hulu experience with their own collection of shows, movies, networks and more. Like with other services, the more you watch, the smarter the system gets.

You can browse Hulu's library while you watch with a Fliptray feature that lets you quickly find what else is on, change the channel, or get recommendations of what to watch next. Just tap the Fliptray button during playback to get started with this multitasking capability.

The app supports iPhone and iPad with iOS 10+ and the fourth-generation Apple TV.

A free seven-day trial of Hulu Live TV is available to new and eligible subscribers. As a cool bonus, Hulu will let you try out each of the add-ons for one month without being charged.

Download Hulu Live TV from App Store.

Twitter partnering with Bloomberg in its live streaming endeavor

Twitter's bird logo set against a transparent background

Twitter will be partnering with Bloomberg for its push into 24/7 streaming video as the micro-blogging service fights for video ad dollars, which accounted for the largest portion of its ad revenue in the first quarter.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Bloomberg will create a dedicated service that will stream news produced solely for Twitter 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

Twitter planning to air live video 24/7

Twitter's bird logo set against a transparent background

Twitter has hinted at plans to eventually air live video 24/7 via both its website and app. That's coming from the mouth of its CFO and COO Anthony Noto, who discussed plans for an always-on Twitter with BuzzFeed News on Wednesday morning, ahead of the company’s earnings report.

Refusing to offer a timetable for the feature, he did acknowledge that the micro-blogging platform wants to build on the more than 800 hours of live shows it aired in the first three months of 2017, including live sports, election coverage and programming from Bloomberg, BuzzFeed and the like.

Chinese government takes issue with live streaming apps on App Store

Chinese regulators have taken issue with live-streaming apps that can be downloaded from App Store. As Reuters said Wednesday citing the official Xinhua News Agency, a government body in China’s capital charged with regulating Internet services is planning to “summon” Apple and urge the company to “tighten its checks” regarding live-streaming apps on App Store.

Tip: save storage space on your iPhone and iPad by clearing Periscope’s stored data

Clearing caches in your favorite apps is one of the many ways of saving storage space on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch that may be lost to the cruft accumulated on your devices. We've already shown you how to clear Twitter's web and media storage as well as delete Dropbox's caches.

In this tutorial, we'll discuss how to clear any cached files in Twitter's Periscope app for iOS, which will help save that precious storage space on your device.

iOS users can now broadcast 360-degree videos on Periscope

Twitter in December 2016 launched 360-degree video streaming on Periscope, its live video broadcasting service.

The feature was initially limited to select partners ahead of a wider launch. Following extensive testing with a small number of people, iOS users can now broadcast 360-degree videos from Periscope's iPhone app.

How to create a Live broadcast on Instagram

Called a Live Broadcast, this feature that Instagram rolled out allows users to share live videos as Instagram stories in real time. Followers can then watch the live stream, submit comments, and Like the video has it is being streamed.

In this post, we will show you how to share a live broadcast on Instagram, and how you can connect with your followers in the process.

You can now stream live video from Twitter app

Twitter today announced that users of its mobile app can now broadcast Periscope-powered live video. Why go live on Twitter? Because live video broadcasts “bring moments and events to life in a way that no other medium can,” said the popular microblogging service. This newly added feature requires an update to Twitter's mobile app, which is rolling out to everyone on the App Store today.

Instagram confirms live video streaming is coming to its mobile app

According to Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom in the Financial Times newspaper this morning, the popular photo-sharing service will be gaining the ability to stream live video. “Live is really exciting for us,” Systrom said without detailing when it'll launch in the mobile app. Russian news outlet Tjournal.ru was first to report that Instagram appears to have been testing the upcoming feature with a subset of its Russian users.