Hulu has announced a subscription service called "Hulu Plus" for $9.99 a month. According to a blog posting on its corporate site, Hulu Plus is not a replacement for Hulu.com. Hulu Plus is a new, ad-supported subscription product that is incremental and complementary to the existing Hulu service.

For almost all of the current broadcast shows on its service, Hulu Plus offers the full season. Every episode of the current season will be available, not just a handful of trailing episodes. Hulu Plus subscribers will also have access to back seasons or full runs of some poplular shows such as all nine seasons of The X-Files; ten seasons of Law and Order: SVU; and every episode of Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.

Hulu Plus subscribers can now watch the Hulu service through more than just the browser on their Mac or PC. Hulu Plus subscribers who own select Samsung Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players can download a Hulu Plus application from the Samsung app store and start streaming Hulu Plus directly.

In addition to accessing Hulu Plus on laptops, subs can access Hulu content via WiFi or 3G on the Apple iPad and iPhone.

"We are already hard at work on porting Hulu Plus to other devices and platforms, with PlayStation 3 coming soon," according to the posting, which added that "for all Hulu Plus subscribers, we’ll now stream all native HD content in 720p high definition.

Hulu is launching the service in waves via invitations: "We’ll be sending out invitations in waves [hint: if you follow Hulu on Twitter or “Like” Hulu on Facebook, we’ll be handing out invites to a random set from each of those groups from time to time over the coming months]. We’ll be sending out as many invitations as we can each week, and as soon as we’re ready, we’ll remove the need for an invitation and start bringing in new subscribers without delay."

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