How To Cut Cable and Still Watch Your Favorite Shows (even on the road!) + Free After School Screen Time Printable For Kids!
5 years ago we moved out of our house in town and into a home in the country. We made a decision then to cut cable and not go back! We have officially been free from cable or satellite tv for 5 whole years now! We haven’t regretted that decision for a second. It has saved us thousands of dollars and here’s the best part, we still get to watch all of our favorite tv shows! I’ll show you how we cut cable and still watch tv for free!
When we made the decision to cut cable we knew we still wanted to be able to watch some of our favorite shows. We did a few things to ensure we could still watch our favorite tv shows for free.
The first thing we did was buy an antenna. This went up on our roof and delivers the major networks free of charge straight to our tv. We bought this antenna and we were in business with all the major networks!
Now we had the major networks so I could watch my favorite shows like Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy, but that still left a major void in our favorite show list. The kids love PBS which our antenna delivers for free, but they want to watch other favorite shows too. We also wanted to be able to watch movies on demand.
Piece number 2 of the puzzle was adding in this Roku Streaming Stick. This allows us to be able to watch even more of our favorite tv shows and movies for free. It gives me access to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, HBO Now, Showtime, GooglePlay, ESPN, YouTube, PBS and more.
We went with the Roku Streaming Stick over other devices because it outperforms them. Roku is the only pocket-sized streamer with a quad-core processor; more processing power than Amazon Fire TV stick and Google ChromecastTM. It also offers private listening via a mobile phone or tablet using the Roku Mobile App (for iOS and AndroidTM devices) which allows you to listen with headphones!
The Roku Streaming Stick is extremely easy to set up and use! It comes with everything you need in the box (even the batteries for the remote!).
Simply plug it in to the back of your tv and plug the cord into the outlet to power the Roku Streaming Stick.
Once you’ve plugged it into your tv it wall walk you through setting it up which takes about 5-10 minutes. Once you’ve completed the steps it is ready to go and you are ready to watch tv shows and movies for free!
Roku has a huge variety of channels, both free and paid. Here is a small sample of the more than 3,000 channels in the Roku Channel Store:
• Top streaming channels including HBO NOW, Amazon Video, SHOWTIME, Hulu, Netflix, GoPro, Sling TV, FX NOW, PLEX and more
• More sports channels than any other streaming platform including NFL Now, NFL Sunday
Ticket, Big Ten Network, MLB.TV Premium, MLS, NBA Game Time, NHL GameCenter Live, Tennis
Channel, Red Bull TV, and UFC
• The largest selection of music channels including Pandora, Spotify and Slacker
• The most News and weather channels including ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, AOL On and WSJ Live
• Channels for every interest and audience including: Kids, Comedy, International, Lifestyle,
Educational, Tech, Spirituality as well as Fitness and Outdoors
Beyond the Roku Channel Store you’ll find access to many other options. I have Amazon Prime but have never taken advantage of the free Amazon Video streaming that Prime members get as part of their yearly subscription. I pulled up Amazon Video and was amazed at all the free tv shows and movies I can access! They have everything from kids entertainment to my favorite shows like Downton Abbey! If you don’t have Amazon Prime you can try it for free and see if the Amazon Video benefits are worth the subscription.
The new Roku Streaming Stick is available from Roku.com and retailers nationwide including Walmart and Best Buy for a suggested retail price of $49.99. You can also find it on Amazon. All Roku players come with a 1-year warranty.
Now that you have access to free tv and movies you will want to put some limits in place for the kids. If I let my kids they’d sit in front of the TV all day long! Now with back to school time I have put together this fun free printable screen time sheet that my kids need to complete before they earn 30 minutes of screen time. Once they finish homework, play outside for 20 minutes, make something creative, clean up their toys and complete one chore of my choosing, then they can sit down and watch their favorite tv programs for 30 minutes.
Since we have the Roku stick the kids get to pick from a variety of their favorite shows once they’ve earned their screen time. Brady’s favorite is Bubble Guppies and he loves the episode with the clambulance. My older kids love watching National Geographic Kids! They learn so much that I don’t feel at all guilty over letting them have some extra screen time.
Keep a good balance of activities by having your kids fill out this free printable screen time sheet before they flick on the tv! Print it off by clicking here.
Are you ready to cut the cord and ditch cable? It is 100% doable! You can cut the cord and still watch your favorite tv shows! Plus with the Roku Streaming Stick you can even take them with you on the road! Going on vacation? Going away to college? Just take your Roku Streaming Stick with you and you’ll instantly have the same free tv you enjoyed at home! We are going camping soon and the campground has free wifi. We are brining our Roku Streaming Stick with so my hubby and I can enjoy movies when the kids are in bed. I can’t wait! It’s so convenient and I don’t have to buy movies for us to watch anymore. That means less clutter and hello…it’s free!
Roku sounds pretty awesome! We complain about our cable bill all the time, but we’ve never done anything about it because we were afraid we’d miss out on our favorite shows. Thanks so much for sharing this!
It is a great way to ditch the cable bill while still being able to keep up with your favorite shows.
I need to look into this. Our costs are ridiculous lately!
I love these tips!!! What a fun way to take shows on the road with you like this.
Man everything can come everywhere huh!! Wow so fascinating. 🙂
oh my… Hubby keeps talking about trying to cut cable, but I am not so sure. LOL… But, my inlaws have the Roku and love it. They say it has been really nice having just about everything at their fingertips!
It’s a little scary at first but with things like Roku you really don’t miss anything. Least of all the bill.
But if you use the roku device dont you have to have some type of internet service ? Streaming is very expensive here we dont have unlimited internet we too are out in the country and any internet we could get would be to slow to stream? Right now we are using a hot spot for internet and it is so expensive plus satilite for tv and then our phones if some one could exolain how to do this i would do it in a heart beat i am not dumb when it comes to this but it just seems like you would be switching one bill for another? We only get the cheap package from direct we dont even get the movie channels we are still soending around 500 a month because of internet overages!!!!! I have to download files for my business
Yes, you need Internet service.
We’ve still got satellite but we’ve had Roku for several years now and really like it! Thanks for posting this information! Blessings, Janet
We don’t have a TV in our house and it’s amazing all the other profitable things you can do instead of watch TV.
My uncle and aunt lived without cable for years. I’ve always wanted to try it but haven’t made the leap.
A lot of the channels you listed are not free. For example: in order to watch programs on HBO or Bravo through your roku or firestick ( I have both) you need to have them on you cable package and prove that you do via an activation link between your cable provider and the device.
I especially love the idea of using streaming services to keep kids entertained without relying on traditional TV. If you’re looking for more options, I recommend checking out cozi tv. They offer a fantastic selection of classic shows that the whole family can enjoy together. Plus, you can read more about user experiences on their reviews page at Pissed Consumer. It’s a great way to find nostalgic content while managing screen time!