Should I drop HULU for Youtube TV?

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I have 1Gbps fiber at the house, TV's are hardwired, and I still have intermittent buffering with HULU. Everythime they do an app update, it does that, then a while later another update comes along and fixes it.

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Are you using built-in smart TV apps for video streaming?

I had a ton of issues with buffering on my TV. Recently switched to an upgraded streaming device and it’s made the experience 100x better.

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You mean like the HULU app on the TV itself? Yes.

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Don’t do that

Get a set top box (ROKU, Fire TV, Apple TV, etc). Smart TVs are not built to handle what set top boxes can. No matter what anyone tells you, the ultimate streaming performance is on a set top box

My parents have Hulu and it buffers quite often. If a game is on the ESPN App you can switch to it and never see it buffer

I use Amazon FireTV devices.

Most of them I use a FireTV stick, such as the 4K or 4K Max. I don’t notice much of an issue but don’t use Hulu (or Disney+ which also buffered bad) as often on those devices.

The one I noticed the most was my living room TV that used a FireTV Cube (Gen 1). It was awful and bothered me a lot. I don’t have great internet speed so always blamed it on that. I switched to Starlink and it didn’t seem to help that much, which was a little confusing.

I just upgraded to the FireTV Cube Gen 3 and it’s incredible the difference it made. I’m not sure I’ve had it buffer once since then.

So, all this to say it’s likely not Hulu directly, but the device you’re using to stream it. I enjoy Hulu along with the bundle and exclusive content.

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What are you using?

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Roku Ultra. I went through every cheaper Roku option but they all ended up dying within months due to overheating (there is plenty of ventilation in the area, the Roku items just had no ventilation in their enclosures). The Ultra has been rock solid, I have a 250M Cox connection for a security system, a couple of laptops (one of which I am usually gaming on), a desktop, the streaming for the TV, a couple of tablets and a desktop. For years now I haven't had any issues but over the last two months I've noticed that every now and then I'll get a very brief (second or two) buffering issue. I think it's more likely to be my Roku or cable connection though as I've noticed Netflix has gotten stuck at time or two (thus far) at its initial opening logo when swapping over to it.

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Would like one of the USB stick devices plugged into the USB of the TV also work?

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They actually plug into an HDMI port. Some use USB for power though.

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Do they use wireless or an ethernet cable?

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I believe all of the sticks use WiFi. If you want to use ethernet you'd need to use one of the "boxes" which may make hiding it a little more difficult.