Cable television comes at a high price:
Financially: $55/month, compounded over 10 years at 7% interest, equals roughly $10,000 spent.
Intellectually: According to a recent Nielsen study, Americans spend 34 hours a week, or 1768 hours per year, watching TV. About 30% of that time, or roughly 530 hours per year, are spent watching advertisements. Not only do you pay thousands for the cable service, you’re persuaded to continue spending through excellent advertisements.
How to Get it for Free
You can find any television program on the internet for free, which means cable television can be completely replaced by a high-speed internet connection.A few favorite streaming sites of mine are Series Cravings and TV Box. Neither charges any fees or requires you sign up for an account (although you’ll need an ad blocker on your internet browser to combat the annoying pop-ups). Also note that the sites have DMCA (copyright) compliance policies listed, which makes them seem legitimate.
For the most part, individuals in other countries host the files. It’s a bit of legal gray area, but as long as you don’t download any of the files, the general consensus is that you have not violated any internet/media agreement laws.
If you still can’t find what you are looking for, you can simply type in what you want to watch in Google. Try various terms like “(Your Show) Season 1 Episode 5” or “(Your Show) S1e05” or “(Your Show) Season 1 Online”
If you aren’t comfortable streaming the content online, how about buying an antenna to enjoy free programming? We own this HomeWorx HDTV Digital Antenna and it pulls in 25+ High Definition channels for free.
Other cheap options include:
- Amazon Prime includes a huge number of TV shows and movies at no additional cost
- Netflix is around $10 per month
- Hulu: is $8 or $12 per month
- Sling TV: Offers 150 channels starting at $20 per month
- Roku streaming player: a streaming hardware device that makes streaming across multiple platforms simple. Devices cost about $110.
Getting Internet Shows on the Big Screen TV
All of these internet based video options can easily be connected to your primary TV using one of the following methods:
1) The Best Method – Buy a streaming device like the Amazon Fire TV or Amazon Fire TV Stick. These work great, and everyone in our family has one. Then install Kodi on the Fire TV. Kodi allows you to watch almost anything through the internet for free, including live TV streams.
2) The Easiest Method – Run an HDMI cable from your computer/tablet/phone to the television. All newer laptops (and many other electronics) have an HDMI out port. Desktop computers can be outfitted with a cheap graphics card to create an HDMI out port.
