Netflix is the most popular service, started in 1997, where movies and TV programs can be streamed to your TV, computer or mobile device. Although it is still a good value starting at $8.80 per month featuring approximately 4500 movies and 2500 television series, today there are many other alternatives for those who want to cut the cord and save a couple of hundred bucks on their monthly entertainment bill. Ahead are the top five alternatives available for a similar price as Netflix.
1. Amazon Prime: At $99 per year or approximately $13 per month, Amazon Prime offers even more of a selection of movies and TV shows at approximately 19,000 movies and 2,000 TV series. Many of the series and movies are original programs, similar to Netflix. The caveat is that not all of these programs are available with the subscription and have to be purchased or rented. The benefit to Prime is that, as a member, you get perks such as free two-day shipping for anything purchased from Amazon, a free Kindle book every month and unlimited access to Amazon Music.
2. Hulu Plus: Hulu Plus will offer a $5.99 per month subscription with limited ads movies, TV shows, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and some original programming. Advertising free programming will cost you $11.99 per month. They offer about 2,500 films and 1,600 series programming.
3. Vudu TV: Vudu can be subscribed to for free with the option to view approximately 8,000 movies. To access their over 150,000 available movies, you can opt-in the buy or rent them for an additional fee.
4. Tubi TV: Tubi is another great option if you don’t want to pay for anything. You don’t need to subscribe or hand over a credit card number and there is no rental or purchase price to view thousands of streaming movies. The only catch is that their limited, short commercials interspersed throughout the movies. But in no way is it as annoying or as numerous as in cable or satellite TV.
5. Crackle: Another free streaming TV and movie service where you will have to sit through a few commercials is Crackle, which is owned by Sony. You will find a lot of classic movies and TV series here that are available on a rotating basis.
In conclusion, there are probably hundreds of other streaming services that offer services beyond and above these five which also includes live sports, music, video games and any kind of cult movies and TV programs, but these five are the best bang for your buck if you are looking to ditch that $200 bill on cable or satellite service that offers more programming than you can watch.