Our Incredibly Simple Hack For Cheap TV

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It’s hard to believe that up until a few years ago, we were humming along paying an outrageous amount of money for TV – cable TV that we rarely ever watched. I’m not kidding when I say that there were times I remember going for days without even turning the television on. When that started to become a pattern, and after we committed to financial independence, we started to examine the expense. So, we cut the cord and haven’t looked back. Not to worry, we didn’t completely turn our backs on the boob tube. Here, I outline how we hack cheap TV!

 Our Simple Hack For Cheap TV

When we got married a few years ago, my new brother-in-law (Mr. MMM’s brother) gave us an NVIDIA Shield to stream TV. This wasn’t a completely foreign concept to us, but we certainly had never tried it before.

We knew this was the future of television, but we were stuck on the “we’ve always done TV this way” merry-go-round. After getting the NVIDIA Shield, we mustered up the courage and cut the cord.

We tried our hand at depending solely on the NVIDIA Shield for all of our TV viewing needs. Guess what. Ever since that day, we have been as happy as a pig in you know what. And we haven’t felt deprived, either. Not one bit.

The NVIDIA Shield comes packed with a ton of apps necessary to watch pretty much whatever it is you want to watch. And whatever isn’t pre-loaded onto the Shield, is easily downloaded through the Google Store. It’s the perfect solution for being able to pick and choose what is important enough for you to pay money to see.

So, if you’re thinking about cutting the cord and streaming TV, here’s the link to the same NVIDIA Shield that was given to us as a wedding gift. And I must say, it has been the MOST used gift we received.

Want a more detailed review from some experts? Check out this CNET Review.

Other articles you might enjoy:

• Cutting The Cable Cord To Financial Freedom
• Shifting To A Frugal Mindset Has Given Us Options. Tons Of Options.
• 14 Ways to Reduce Your Utility Bills This Winter
• 13 Easy Tips To Take Control Of Your Money

TV Alternatives

Today, the name of the game when it comes to TV viewing is a la carte and on-demand. No one wants to pay for channels they’re not watching, or wait to see a show until it’s aired by a network. I mean, seriously, that’s so old-fashioned.

Kids today – and I’m generously including myself in that descriptor 🙂 – want speedy access to only the shows that interest them.

If you happen to be one of those kids, I highly recommend you try a life without cable. Cutting the cord isn’t as traumatic as the cable companies want you to think – not even for sports fans.

There are workarounds for even that. One option is to watch important games at someone else’s house. Now, I understand that might not be a viable option for avid sports fans that like to catch most of the games.

In this instance, you could try one of the IPTV services available in HD. Say whaaat? It’s not a foreign language, I promise. 🙂

IPTV stands for Internet Protocol TV. A lot of these services offer ALL channels. And I probably don’t need to tell you that if you’re getting ALL channels, you’re getting all the sports games.

The best part? Most of these services are unlimited for a very low fee. I’m talking as low as $20/month. There aren’t any contracts and you even have the ability to stream TV to your phone! Now if that doesn’t beat the cord, I don’t know what does.

Real TV Alternatives:

• NVIDIA Shield – Our platform of choice 🙂
• ROKU
• Apple TV
• IPTV

TV Lifelines

TV lifelines come down to one thing – choice. In the world of on-demand, a la carte TV, there truly is an app for that. Some are free and some have a fee, but if you go a la carte, you’ll still be paying a heck of a lot less than you would be if you were paying for cable. Here are some of the popular ones.

Outstanding TV Apps Any Cord Cutter Should Consider:

• Netflix ~ $8/mo
• Amazon Prime Video ~ $9/mo
• Hulu ~ $8/mo
• YouTube ~ FREE
• HBO NOW – I mean, c’mon, how else are you going to watch Game of Thrones? Oh, it’s also about $9 – $15/mo.
• Starz ~ $9 – $15/mo
• Showtime ~ $9 – $15/mo

Our Apps Of Choice

Just what are our apps of choice? We love YouTube because there is a ton of content and it’s completely FREE. We also pay for Netflix. These two apps pretty much supply us with all our family needs to be happy. And with the money we save each month by not paying for cable, we’re unbelievably happy.

And there you have it, we cut the cord and are happily watching all theTV we want to watch via our NVIDIA Shield – given to us for free as a wedding gift. You can’t beat that.

So, just what do we spend each month on TV? It works out to be about $9/month for our Netflix subscription. That’s a far cry from the $150/mo we were once paying. The absolute best part about it is not even noticing we cut the cord. Yay!

Note: If we hadn’t been given our NVIDIA Shield as a wedding gift, I still think we would’ve made the initial purchase as an alternative to our super expensive and unnecessary cable service.

So, how do you do TV? Are you still paying for cable? Or, have you cut the cord and joined the revolution?