The toughest plan in digital media is being prepared by Hulu, the popular online site for watching television shows, which will be free in the beginning, but will become paid later on.

Hulu will continue to provide the five most recent episodes of shows including Fox's Glee, ABC's Modern Family and NBC's Saturday Night Live for free. But for additional episodes, the viewers would have to pay $9.95 a month to be able to access a more comprehensive selection, called Hulu Plus.

Hulu could face problems in making users to pay for content that they have long grown habituated to getting as well as expecting for free.

Will Richmond, an analyst at VideoNuze said, "Going from free to paid is one of the hardest challenges that any company ever faces. It's a lot easier to go from paid to free than go from free to paid". VideoNuze is a site that covers the online video industry.

This service by Hulu, which ranks second to Google's YouTube in monthly video streams in the U. S, extends itself to other devices like Apple Inc.'s iPad and iPhone, and game consoles like Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox.

Movie subscription service Netflix reported a huge growth in the number of its customers, with its $8.99 plan that makes it possible for the users to watch as many movies as they want. This will give competition to Hulu.