Image via Complex Original
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
Hulu is a blessing. The site gives you a lot of different shows you can catch up on or discover. Yes, there is Hulu Plus, but a lot of people can get by just by using the unpaid version. From The Simpsons, Family Guy, Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, or The Colbert Report, Hulu will usually have new episodes up by the next day. The service won't let you watch an entire season of big name shows since that's what Hulu Plus is for, but you shouldn't be watching that much television anyway. Breaking Bad is over.
Create a free Hulu account and subscribe to available shows to get updates when new episodes are available. Or get Hulu Plus for $7.99.
Netflix
Yeah, yeah, you knew ol' Blockbuster-killer was going to be on here for sure. But chances are that you've been bumming your Netflix off of your best friend for the past year. But the service is getting better all the time, and chances are the best is yet to come. It's worth the $7.99 monthly price if you don't already have it, more so than Hulu Plus, and if you can find a friend of family member that will let you have their sign-in data, you can set up your own profile and have your own queue since Netflix allows up to five different profiles for one account. Plus, you can watch Neflix on your tablet or phone as well.
Amazon Prime
Amazon is still trying to find its footing in the streaming business. They're trying to come out with their own original programming like Netflix, but they need some time fine-tune them out. Personally, I can't recommend getting Amazon Prime only for streaming, but what I can recommend is getting the yearly subscription for the entire Amazon Prime package, which comes with streaming and free two-day shipping on packages that have the Prime symbol next to them (which is a lot of them). It's $79 a year, so if you order a ton of things, it pays off.
Finding Specific Shows Online
If you really want to keep things cheap, just crawl the websites of the networks of your favroite shows. NBC, ABC, and South Park Studios, all have episodes up from some recent shows, and new ones will be up for a limited time.
VipBox
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
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
Project Free TV has a HUGE amount of shows to choose from. Though, not every link will work. One of the advantages of having multiple sites to go to is that while some links won't work on one, another might have it ready to go.
Stream-TV
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.
Blinkx
Movie 4k and Blinkx work similarly to Vip and Stream TV. I prefer Movie 4k, but Blinkx has its own selection. It's worth throwing this up here on the off chance that the show you want is on one of these sites, so try it out and see.
Torrents
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.
