If you are considering cutting the cord and moving to a combination of Antenna and Streaming Services to replace your expensive Cable or Dish subscription then you are probably trying to find out what is available for free.
Now obviously you could stream lots of content if you are willing to pay through the nose. There is even one LEGAL service out there that will stream Movies to your home while they are still in the box office but it costs something like $15,000 a year. But hey if you make lots and lots of money you probably don’t have time to go to a movie with your kids so its probably a good investment for a small group of people.
On the other hand if you are like me and the rest of the world you are thinking about cutting the cord because of cost. Maybe you just can’t afford a Cable subscription at all or maybe its too much of a waste. Either way you want content thats free to watch. You don’t want to be paying $1.99 for every hour of content like you’re at some expensive hotel watching PPV movies.
It seems that about half of the content streaming providers offer some free options. Hulu was one of the first to offer free streaming of television shows and movies. There selection has changed over time and much of what was once free is now pay under Hulu Plus. Other services like Netflix have never been free or offered any publicly accessible free content. You always need a membership from them. And then you have Google which has a much smaller library of free and paid content. Personally I have never used Apple’s offerings and this probably won’t change for me. When Apple first started offering content It was very intrusive and that hasn’t really changed. I understand they do have some good features but its just not worth the problem so I will go elsewhere until they change their direction.
Where does Amazon Prime lay in the field of Video Content Providers?
If you are already an Amazon Prime member you should definitely take advantage of the free options available to you for streaming content.
The free offerings on Amazon are pretty slim and few and although you can browse most of the categories and see the top 5 or 10 are relatively new and decent movies it doesn’t take more than a single page turn to see that most of the free content is really really old or really really bad.
But lets step back one and talk about the free part.
Amazon Prime isn’t really free. If you are a base member of Amazon you can’t access that content until you upgrade to Prime or unless you want to pay more money than is reasonable.
For example I wanted to look at a few episodes of Battlestar Galatica. This was a series that was Broadcast on the SciFi network and rerun for a number of years now on other networks. It is a basic cable show that is no longer being developed and Im not sure if even the SciFi network is showing it in reruns anymore.
Needless to say most people are not screaming to see it but it was an interesting series until it ended.
So, I go on Prime and look for the series. It seems it isn’t available but they will sell you dvds of the series for a couple hundred bucks or something. No i am not that interested .. maybe BBCA will start rerunning it again in the future.
But theres the thing.. even old shows that have long gone past are not available and the ones that are free on Prime are not that great. If you are willing to pay $15 you can get access to a season of shows on a number of half way decent shows but thats even if you are a Prime Member that you have to pay.
If you were to select 5 shows at $10 to $15 for a season that would approach a months worth of Cable. So, thats not an option.
I mean it can get pretty unreasonable even a unpopular show on HGTV can run you $35 for a season and whats worse is HGTV.com offers online video content and full shows for free from their website. .. so .. yeah not so great offerings.
I think the most important thing is that if you are a Prime Member you should take advantage of the Free Content.
Then take advantage of Free Content from other providers like Hulu or even YouTube or any internet content you find interesting.
When you have dried up all of your options including whats playing over the antenna then I might suggest that you hit your local library and see if they have a DVD section that offers free takeouts. I wouldn’t pay for any of that but if it is free then go for it.
Finally after you have nothing else that is when you might think about getting a movie and you should do it from the provider with the lowest cost.
How do you stream Amazon Prime Video to your Television?
There are a number of ways to get streaming services to your television. Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, and Amazon’s own Firestick are all options that will work for most people. If you are outside of the United States things can get a bit more difficult and you will need to see what is available in your region.
You will need a device that can stream live and so you will also need a pretty strong Broadband connection if you want HD Content. I would suggest a 5Mbit connection at the slowest for HD Streams.
Final Note
Amazon Prime isn’t free but it is an option to supplement over the air antenna content.
Start out with the free options and while you are watching that content you can see if there is anything worth your hard earned cash.
At this point there is no way or no easy way to save the online content to your local disk to play back without an internet connection.
There are options to cast the content from your phone to the tv but this will eat your data plan so be careful about that. An hour of HD Video can use Gigs of Data.
But if you do choose this service .. don’t be paying $29 for a series thats broadcast over the air.
I really like Amazon.. but don’t waste your money like that.