A Guide to Watching What You Want on TV Without Paying For Cable

Save yourself some cash.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Between birthdays, bills, and bars, we're spending a ton of money. So much so that you might not even notice you've spent your last paycheck a whole week before your next one comes. In this day and age, we need to watch everything we spend, and cut off the extra expenses when we can. One of things is TV. There are a ton of options out there to get your daily dose of television and film without having to spend a ton every month on your cable provider. Now you can find free and cheap ways of catching up on your favorite shows, or watching a movie that's just finished up in theatres but not yet on DVD. Here is A Guide to Watching What You Want on TV Without Paying For Cable. Use them at your own risk, but sometimes the risk will pay off.

Hulu

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Netflix

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Amazon Prime

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Finding Specific Shows Online

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VipBox

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Okay, now that we got all that other stuff out of the way, let's move on.

VipBox is an awesome spot to go to if you're stuck without a way to catch the game. From football, basketball, baseball, hockey, or international sports, VipBox will likely have a channel that's streaming it live.

When you head to the site, pick the sport you want to watch. 

Once you do that, click through to find the game you want. 

Once you click it, you'll come to a window with some different "channels" to view it on. Usually the first link works, so try that. (They're different for various games.)

You'll come to a screen with a lot of pop-ups, so be warned. Once you click them out, there will be a timed-ad on the screen that counts down from 20, then you'll be good to go.

This is how a lot of these type of sites work, so remember this.

GiddyUp Network

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GiddyUp Network isn't as pretty as some of the other sites, but it does offer a pretty big selection of shows and flicks to choose from. Just find a flick or show, then hit "watch this" near the image. The video should pop up below with a few ads to get by.

Project Free TV

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Stream-TV

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Stream TV is a good spot to catch new episodes quickly. Episodes are uploaded by users, and usually about an hour or two after a new episode airs, someone will have likely uploaded it to the site. Similarly to VipBox, you pick a show, then you'll be taken to a different page with the actual video. 

Then:

Notice the X in the top right hand corner? That indicates that there is an ad (other than the banner at the bottom that's asking for a Premium Account. Ignore this.) A lot of times, these ads have a fake "x," and when you click it, a pop-up with appear. There will be a smaller "x" that appears after you click the fake "x," that will be the real one and it might appear after a few seconds. Once you get past the ad, the vid is yours. Just keep hitting the play button until you get through the ads. Might be about three ads tops.

I've used these methods on a MacBook and Mac, and haven't come across any viruses or so yet, but just remember that that's a risk for some of these types of sites.

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Torrents

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Okay so you really want to get your hands dirty? Torrenting is probably one of the best ways to watch a movie or show whenever you want, because you're not streaming any more, you're playing for keeps. Don't know how to torrent? It's tricky, but here are the basics.

Go to here and download BitTorrent.

Once you download that, head to a torrenting site, like The Pirate Bay. 

Search for something you want, and a list of users will come up who have the file you're looking for up to download. If you're looking for Movie A, look for someone who has Movie A up and click. From there you go to the file's page and you'll see the file's description along with some other info. 

For this movie, you'll see the file is 1.12 GB, which is a little more than normal but not bad. The seeder number is zero, and that's the number you should hope is high. The more seeders there are, the more places your download will be able to pull its data from. For example, think of your movie as a pie. You want a whole pie, but have nothing. There are a ton of people out there that have the pie you want, and they'll give you bits and pieces of their pie so you can have a whole one. These are your seeders. You, in turn, give out your pie to someone else who might want it. This isn't perfect illustation of it, but that's close to what you're doing with torrenting. 

Hit "Get This Download" after you've read the comments to make sure no one has detected any bugs or viruses in the file, and from there BitTorrent will open up, and thus beginning your download. Once it's completed, you're probably going to need to play the movie with VLC, so download that here. (It's just a really good media player, don't worry.) Just right click on the movie's file, and pick Open With VLC Player, and you're set.

Torrenting has some risks, and is illegal, and we don't encourage you to do it. But it's not hard to find out how to do it, so here you are. 

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