Here are some great and cheap alternatives to cable that will save you a TON of money while giving you free movies and the channels you want!
We finally ditched cable and saved ourselves about $150.00 a month!! I must say I was a bit apprehensive and although I wanted to find great alternatives to cable. I hadn’t found one that would let me watch my favorite shows, let me save the shows I love, and offer a great selection of shows until now!! Let me show you what we found! (affiliate links present in order to support this site, no added costs are passed on to you, originally published 8/16)
Like I said, I wanted to ditch cable for a while now but I do like relaxing in the evenings and watching the shows I love and hadn’t found a great alternative to cable until now.
I tried Hulu and another one I cannot even remember because it was so bad that I didn’t try it for very long. Then I heard of Amazon TV and wondered about that option.
When it was Amazon Prime day we snagged one of these Amazon Fire TV systems. If you don’t have an Alexa you can use this version. I decided to give it a try (figured we could return it if it didn’t work for us).
The problem I had with other cable alternatives was I didn’t like their guide, it was difficult to find the shows I was looking for, and they didn’t offer a large selection of stations and movies either. This has everything I was looking for, let me show you how it works.
It takes less than 5 minutes to hook up the box to your t.v. You then can choose from a few different alternative to cable providers.
We tried two, Sling and PlayStation.Vue. The latter was exactly what I was looking for in regards to a really easy to use menu. You don’t have to own a Playstation to subscribe to this, we don’t have one ourselves!
It is just $40 a month and you get a lot of channels! For $10 more you can add a sports package or other packages of channels if you like as well but the basic service has all the ones we enjoy like Discovery, WE, Bravo and a lot more. You can see all the packages PlayStation.Vue offers here.
Alternatives to cable
Why Playstation Vue paired with Amazon Fire TV is better than all the others I tried.
- The t.v. guide on Playstation Vue is alphabetical so you can scroll thru the channels that are playing live t.v. and choose the show you want.
- You can set up your “favorite shows” and it creates a subcategory where you can scroll thru just those shows and watch past shows as well as those that might be on right then and there.
Amazon Fire TV has a DVR function where you can hit the + button and it adds it to “my shows”, then you can replay them whenever you want and fast forward thru the commercials.
- If you buy the Amazon Fire TV unit and have Amazon Prime like we do it streams all the free movies and music you get thru that service as well so you now have thousands of free titles to choose from.
- (if you don’t have an Alexa you can use this version)
- Thru Amazon Prime there are also free games the kids can play…all for $40 monthly fee, saves us a ton and we don’t feel like we are missing out at all.
If you too are looking for cheap alternatives to cable I highly recommend trying Amazon Fire TV, if you have a tv that is a bit older the Fire Stick is even cheaper at about $39 as opposed to $99 (we used the stick on our older set and Fire TV on the 2 newer televisions).
It took us quite some time to find the best avenue to go down to save money and still have the channels we enjoy….it’s worth a shot!!
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Thank you! I’ve been trying to convince my husband to let me cancel the cable to over a year. Didn’t know about the PlayStation Vue. I pulled it up, asked about the channels he likes, and found them all on the $30/month package. I’ll save $120/month, plus he can download the app on his tablet & watch things while he’s away for work instead of me having to record all his shows.
Yes!! We love it and have saved so much.
Looks like a great alternative. I like that the guide is alphabetical. It would make it much easier to find what I’m looking for.
Do you have to get a Amazon Fire TV set for each TV you use in the house?
Also, any advice for Internet services? I’m finding out most Internet services are around 40/month, which is still 80/month total with Amazon fire TV.