ROKU Review: Cutting Cable for Better Stuff at Cheaper Prices - I Love Streaming TV and You May, Too

Roku offers several options.

I cut cable on November 9, 2012 - this was such a big deal for me that I wrote the date on a stickie and stuck it on my monitor, so I'd remember the date.  Sure I was scared to see the cable box leave; of course I was worried I had made a mistake.

Lemme tell you: I have never looked back.

No, I didn't stop watching television - in fact, I'm watching TV about the same amount of time that I was before.  However, things are different now.

Big Money Saver

First things first: I'm saving around $100/month by opting for streaming TV via my ROKU HD instead of paying for TimeWarner cable (I had the account that was one above the basic service -- the one where you got TBN but no HBO or Showtime).  Start up costs here: around $50.00 for the ROKU device (I got it online at Roku's website) and about 10 minutes maximum to set things up.

Monthly charges?  I pay $8/month for Netflix and $8/month for Amazon Instant/Prime Videos.  My internet charge is for "turbo" from TimeWarner, and that's around $50.00 per month.  I signed up for Hulu Plus at $8/month but I never use it ... well, for Revenge on ABC when a new show airs.  I'm rethinking Hulu Plus right now: I could catch Revenge online at the ABC website for free, if that's all I need with the Hulu Plus membership.

Set up? It's a walk in the park.  

Seriously, this gizmo is easy peasy, set-up wise.  You do need to be ready to access the web with your laptop or tablet or whatever in order to do the initial login, etc. but it's not hard.  Astonishingly easy.

HULU Keeps Getting Bigger: ABC starts today

ABC content starts arriving on Hulu this week, which means that lots of relatively recent TV shows are going to be available for viewing -- joining lots of other stuff that you might find interesting, as well as at the right price (free).

What else is at Hulu? Just now, they were showing the following as their most popular movies (there are lots of movies there):

Virtuality
Benny & Joon
The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three
The Last Of The Mohicans
Prelude To A Kiss

They've also got classic TV shows, trailers and clips, and informational videos. Close captioning is available, too.

Still More Free Movies: Fancast

Fancast is creating quite a nice menu of movies and TV show episodes that you can watch for free. As an example of what you can see, right now, for free, check out some of their listings under M and N:

The Madness of King George
The Magic Sword
The Magnificent Seven
The Man Who Never Was
Man Without a Gun
The Man from Planet X
Man of La Mancha
Master and Commander

The Milagro Beanfield War
Moby Dick
Moonstruck
More Dead Than Alive
Mrs. Pollifax - Spy
Murders in the Rue Morgue
Muscle Beach Party
My Name Is Joe


Naked Lunch
Ned Kelly
Niagara, Niagara
Nicholas Nickleby
The Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
Nine Lives
Nobody's Fool
North Shore

More and More Free Movies Online

You can watch a nice assortment of free movies over at IMDb .com, like Witness for the Prosecution (one of my favorites) - along with TV shows, trailers, and the like. And, their collection seems to be growing with great regularity.

Even better news: it's in the news today that YouTube and MGM have entered into a pact where YouTube is going to provide free MGM movies at its site (why? to generate advertising dollars, of course).

More Free TV Shows, Too

YouTube will also be offering lots of TV shows (Walker, Texas Ranger was mentioned in the press release). They've already started showing other TV series like Star Trek and The Young and The Restless thru a deal they made with CBS last month.

And, for those of you interested in the behind-the-scenes story: who's really getting a boost here? Google. Yep, Google bought YouTube in 2006.

Sources:
Daily Tech
http://www.dailytech.com/YouTube+to+Feature+MGM+Films+TV+Shows/article13401.htm
Information Week
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/TV_theater/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212001566

Free TV and Free Movies at Hulu.Com

Have you heard about the latest "free" movie and TV site: hulu.com? Good news: it offers some decent stuff. Bad news, there are commercials.

Why check it out? First, there are the collections. (Click here for the full list.)

There's the Christopher Walken Collection (remember the Continental?) and the Steve Martin Collection (includes the full run of The Jerk, plus several SNL skits), as well as several collections from The Family Guy, the Office, In Living Color, SNL ... you get the idea.

Second, there are the full-feature films.

(Go here for the list.) There are sorta current movies like:

Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World with Russell Crowe
The Simpsons Movie
Ice Age

as well as not so current movies, such as:

October Sky
The Big Lebowski
The Usual Suspects
Sideways

No real classic films, though - unless you count The Three Amigos or Planet of the Apes as classics.

And then there are the TV shows (full list is here). They have full episodes of old and new shows, such as:

The Family Guy
24
Charlie's Angels
Prison Break
Medium
Alfred Hitchcock Hour
My Name is Earl
Monk
The Rockford Files
Miami Vice.


No Seinfeld, though. No Star Trek, no Magnum P.I., no Golden Girls or All in the Family or Friends.

But heck. It's new, it's growing, and there's some pretty cool stuff here to check out for free.

New finds for me today included Mrs. Piggle Wiggle - one of my favorite children's books (actually a series) with Jean Stapleton in the starring role, and some great SNL skits -- "Down By the River" is here, some of "Celebrity Jeopardy," "Killer Bees," "Mr. Bill," plus lots of current stuff.

No "More Cowbell," though. At least, I couldn't find it.

More Free Movies Online

Everyday, more and more movies are being downloaded for free viewing ... and there are some great ones out there. Considered to be in the public domain, there is no copyright violation for sharing them online.

PublicDomainTorrents.Com offers up John Wayne in McClintock and seven of the Sherlock Holmes classics.

emol.com has just added My Man Godfrey with William Powell and Carole Lombard; Happy Go Lovely with David Niven and Cesar Romero; and Our Town with William Holden in the title role of the movie classic based upon Wilder's Pulitzer-Prize winning play.

OpenFlix has a film noir section with some of the great ones: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers with Barbara Stanwick, Van Heflin, and Kirk Douglas; Orson Welles' The Stranger; Whistle Stop with George Raft and Ava Gardner; and DOA with Edmund O'Brien. The site has other sections as well: musicals, action, adventure. Lots to choose from.

Movies For Free

You can see relatively recent movies for free easily by checking them out from your local library. Here in San Antonio, it's even easier than simply roaming the shelves: by going to the local public library website, choosing its search function and limiting that to "VHS/DVD" results, you can review the entirety of the city's film library from your chair.

Once found, put a hold on the selections and choose your closest branch. The library system will bring the various selections to your branch, no matter how scattered they may be in the county. Once they are corraled at the branch of your choice, you pick 'em up, watch 'em, return 'em. Free.

How current is the local library's selection? Well, I couldn't find recent releases as shown on RottenTomatoes.com -- but I could find Sideways as well as the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both Academy Award nominees for 2004. Not bad.