Watch TV for FREE Part II

I have had many of you show tremendous interest in learning to watch TV for free, thank you so much for your interest. So here is part II. In part I we discussed that you can purchase an antenna to have local channels available to you but I bet you were thinking that’s really limited TV watching, is there anything else I can? The answer is YES, YES, YES!! There are several ways to stream live TV but I am going to share how we do it at our house. First of all, you will need some type of media player that supports Google play. Here is the specific name of the box we use XGODY New 17.0 Krpton Amlogic S905X Android 6.0 TV BOX 4K Media player Network (which we paid $59.99 for) this box allows to search the web and purchase apps that will assist you in streaming live TV. For the purpose of this blog, I will be referring to the media player I have purchased, the XGODY.

The next step after purchasing this box is of course connecting it to your television and your internet. It is critical in the case of this XGODY box that it has a direct Ethernet cable running from your modem to the box. This box does have a wireless option but in order to get the best quality picture, it is advised that it be directly connected to your modem, we had to run a cord half way across our house . Another critical component to this “system” I use is to make that your interenet service support 12 Mbps or greater. I say greater because if you are streaming live TV and you are also on your phone searching the web, and your child is in the bedroom on their Ipad this could possible cause buffering issues and slow service. So make sure your internet service is 12 Mbps or higher, the more the merrier! Also you will need a wireless keyboard. The system we use does come with a remote but it’s a lot easier to have a keyboard.

Now once you have you device connected to your internet and your TV, the next important component is to download an app., name Kodi. Here is what Kodi is,“Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open source media player application developed by the XBMC/Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet” (https://kodi.tv/). I will be honest with you, Kodi is not the easiest thing to navigate. So, I highly recommend hoping over to You Tube and type in operating Kodi and watching a few videos on how to navigate through it. Once this app is uploaded you are ready to add what the Kodi system calls add-ons and these are basically apps or web addressed within the app of Kodi. I am going to share what “add-ons” we use. To stream already broadcasted TV shows like Blacklist, Walking Dead, House of Cards, Scandal, etc.. we you use an add-on called Exodus. You can literally find any television show and movie that’s ever been televised. I just watched Punky Brewster with my daughter the other day, LOL. Another add-on we use for streaming live TV like ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc… we use Goodfellas 2.0. For your sports needs I would recommend Sports Devil, now I’m going to take this time and tell the guys that read this that we have not been able to figure out a way to access the SEC Network, I’m still working on it though. These 3 add-ons are your basics, there are thousands of other ones and you can also get on You Tube and do your research. I’m sure you are thinking how this can be legal. Well its like anything else you watch on your phone through the internet its just a larger device. If you purchase on EBAY the seller will typically have the Kodi app downloaded and some of the add-ons already installed.

Although, the obvious pro to all this is that it is FREE and you can access anything worldwide it does have its cons. I’m not going to lie this system is very difficult to get up and running. I think I watched around 100 plus You Tube videos to get ours set up, so it can be very time consuming. If your expectations are comparative to regular cable TV, meaning you turn it on and start scrolling, this is not for you! This type of TV watching takes more effort on your part. Another con is that you are at the mercy of your internet service, but in today’s society we are all at the mercy of the internet all the time anyway. It’s like the antenna, it’s based on the needs of your family. We have found it very economical for our family and have adjusted quite well and been able to watch what we want. We do also have NetFlix for the bedrooms and this Kodi system is on the main TV in the living room but you could get boxes for all your rooms but make sure your internet service is at least 16 Mbps plus if you decided to do that.

Here’s the math on all this. So we were paying $200 per month for TV and internet, that’s over $2400 a year, eek… We paid initially $69.99 for our outside antenna and $59.99 for our XGODY media streaming device, so that’s an upfront cost of $129.98. We pay $88 per month for our internet now and $0 for cable. For our family that is a total savings of around $1,000 a year. Just think about how hard you have to work for that $1,000 just to pay for cable.

So if your pro’s outweigh your con’s then this is an option for you! There is a learning curve and it can be quite frustrating at times but money is too tight for everyone today to get ripped off buy expensive cable bills!

Until next time, HAVE A BEAUTIFUL DAY. Follow me on FACEBOOK at https://www.facebook.com/aBeautifullifewithHeather/