Cut The Cable

Ways To Watch TV Without Paying An Arm And A Leg For Cable Or Satellite

by Peter Anderson · 119 comments ·  Print ·  Email ·

Television Can Be Expensive (It Doesn’t Have To Be)

One way that my wife and I have saved money over the years is that while most of our friends have cable or satellite TV, we’ve never paid subscription costs to receive TV programming.  That means that we are saving ourselves a good chunk of money every year.  If you’re in debt, you probably shouldn’t be paying for TV either!
Rates for cable in our area range anywhere from around $12/month for the basic package with only local channels to well over $100/month for upgraded offerings with premium channels and shows. We probably would have ended up going for a middle of the road package, somewhere between $50-60/month. How much have we saved every year by not paying subscription costs for our TV entertainment? Probably between $600-720! That’s a lot of money!  The good news is,  TV doesn’t have to be that expensive! In fact, TV can be cheap or free!
While we haven’t paid for cable TV, we haven’t exactly been deprived, or had to watch only the shows offered by the over the air networks.  There are tons of free video options out there! In fact, we actually still watch a lot of the same shows that our friends do. How do we do it you ask? Through a combination of free over-the-air digital TV,  free online video services (the legal kind), a video streaming software, and a Xbox 360.

Our Low Cost Home TV Setup

Here’s how we watch TV at our house.  Keep in mind that this package isn’t free, but it is lower in cost than the above mentioned $720/year package.   Things we needed:

• TV:  A TV to watch your shows on!  -  Cost:  Free (you probably already have one)
• Playon Software:  This software that can be found at http://www.playon.tv and allows you to stream online video from popular services like Hulu.com, straight to your TV through a networked media device (see below).  -  Cost:  Fee of $39.99 for the first year, $29.99 every year after that. (there is a 14 day free trial)
  
• Networked Media Device – Like Our Xbox 360 (list of Playon supported DLNA-compliant networked media devices):  You can get a brand new Xbox 360 for around $200 nowadays, sometimes cheaper if you buy used or refurbished.  We just got our second one for $75 from a friend. Tons of other networked media devices are compatible as well including Playstation 3, HP Mediasmart TVs, and Nintendo Wii.  Check the link above to see if your device is supported. -  Cost:  Free-$200 (depends on if you have one of these already)
• Video Streaming Services:  There are tons of online video streaming services like Hulu.com, Netflix,  CBS.com, Youtube,  Comedy Central, HGTV, and ESPN that support the Playon software!  The software also now supports plugins, so additional channels are appearing all the time including the Food Network, NBA/NFL content, and others! -  Cost:  Free

In our case, we already had everything at our house, except for the Playon software.  So for this setup we paid $29.99 (the software has since become a subscription software, costing $39.99 the first year, and $29.99 each additional year), plus the $8.99/month for the basic Netflix streaming package (get it, it’s worth it!).  That’s $138 for the first year, and $108 for every year after. That is a lot cheaper than if we were paying for cable!  Here’s a video showing how easy it is to install PlayOn.
For a more detailed look at installing playon, check out this post on Installing Playon.
So here’s how the above cited items are setup at our house in order to stream video from the web, to our TV

1. The Playon software is installed on our home computer connected to the network.
2. Once installed Playon has a media server running in the background that pulls in RSS feeds from major video content providers, which allows the PC to pull in the video streams in the same way that a web browser does.
3. Video is sent over our home network, and played full screen through the Xbox 360 on our 50″ Plasma TV.   Much better than trying to watch shows on our tiny 19″ computer monitor!

Here’s  an explanation of how Playon works from the software’s website:

MediaMall’s PlayOn software is a UPnP digital media server and browser that pulls RSS feeds from content providers, and presents them to DLNA-compliant networked media devices. In plain English, this means you can use your game console or networked television to access content from providers like YouTube, Netflix and Hulu. The PC software pulls in the media streams, in the same way as your web browser, and then sends them directly over your home network to your device, even converting their formats on the fly to make sure the devices can play them. Simple as that.

MyLifeROI.com talks about how he setup the same Playon to Xbox 360 streaming at his house.

Watch Free Over-The-Air HDTV

The setup I talked about above is only one way to get free or low cost TV content.   Another way we get free content at home is through the free over-the-air HDTV channels that are now available to everyone who has a HDTV tuner and an antenna.   If you have a TV with a built in digital tuner and a simple antenna, you should be able to just turn your TV on, and get all the network TV stations in their full HD glory! Check for your local digital stations here.
If you have a regular TV, you’ll need to buy a digital converter box to continue watching TV by this summer anyway, and once you get one, you will then get tons of crystal clear TV stations for free!  When we started watching Digital TV we instantly gained about 5-10 TV stations because some channels have the main channel, and then sub channels as well.
Honestly we could probably survive on our over the air channels alone, although my wife likes to have our cable TV fix every once in a while – which is why we have Playon.

Watch Free TV Online

In addition to the options above, you can also watch TV for free through a variety of websites online.  While it isn’t as fun to watch the shows on a small computer monitor, it is still a good option I think.   Many of these online options may be available for streaming through the Playon software in the future as well.

• Hulu.com: probably the best one out there in my opinion, already works through Playon, but you can watch it on your computer as well if you’d like.
• Fancast.com: Similar to Hulu, not quite as good, but still has tons of great content.
• TV Network Websites: ABC, NBC, CBS all have good full episode streaming options available.
• Joost.com:  Full episodes from a wide variety of shows.
• Tioti.com: Tape It Off The Internet is a social media site for TV shows – allowing you to view episode information, and then see where you can find the show online.
• Veoh.com: Tons of content, including TV shows!
• TidalTV.com: Tons of TV content, not my favorite site or layout, but it works.
• FreeTVOnline.com: Haven’t used this site much, but was recommended to me.
• Sidereel.com: I’m new to this one, but it looks to have lots of good free TV options.
• AOL Video: Both short and long video clips and full shows.

There are a ton of other free video sites out there, this list only lists some of the ones I found to be the best.  Have some free online video options that you use?  Let us know about them in the comments and maybe I’ll add them to the list.

Rent Movies And TV Shows – And Use The Library

Another low cost option to get your TV and movie fix is to either rent your TV shows and movies, or to get them from your local library. My favorite options are:

• Redbox:  Redbox allows you to rent a new release movie for $1 a night,  which is an extremely low cost movie rental option. Search for coupon codes online for free redbox rentals, and it can be even cheaper!
• Netflix.com:  Slightly more, but the added convenience of keeping the movies and TV shows as long as you want, and being able to stream a selection of movies and TV shows over the computer, or networked media device.  $7.99 for the basic streaming only package, $9.99 for 1 DVD at a time plan.  Find all plans and how to maximize your return on this post:  How Much Netflix Costs.
• Your Local Library: Your local library will most likely have  a decent selection of DVD movies that you can check out for a week or more.  My local library tends to be a bit picked over, but if you get on a waiting list you can usually find movies or TV shows you’d enjoy watching.
• Borrow From Friends: Borrow movies and TV shows from friends and family.  They already own a ton of DVDs, they may as well get some use out of them!

Conclusion

A lot of people pay a lot of money in order to be able to watch the TV shows that they want, when they want.  In the process they end up spending upwards of $500-1000 a year, mostly for programming that they don’t watch.  If they would just look a little deeper they might find that there are a lot of free or low cost options out there, and they can get a lot of the same TV shows, movies and other video content for free.
My suggestion?  Read this article, do some research, and find your own low cost option for watching the TV shows that you love.  If you put a few of these tips above into practice, you can save thousands of dollars, just like we have.