Are there alternatives to Cable, DirectTV and Dish Network?

[JasonWilliams]

I'm tired of paying those expensive bills every month. Which one is the alternative way to go that is even free or much cheaper and get all the live tv channels?

[Ben]

Check out Free2air, Hulu and Netflix as alternatives to regular subscribed TV service.

[GrumpyMac]

First - look at your programming package and cut back to a cheaper service. This sends a message to the cable/sat companies.

Second - do a web search for "Cutting the cable" to find sites that will show you how to setup an antenna and internet services to replace some shows. Some networks keep the most recent 2-3 weeks of their popular shows on-line.

Third - be ready to miss some stuff. The cable/sat industry is very careful to make sure some shows are NOT available on-line to keep people subscribed. They really have you by the short hairs if you are a sports fan and follow some favorite teams. These are hardly ever available except through cable/sat.

Fourth - Be ready to 'work' to hunt around to find things. It's wonderful that I never miss a show because I set timers on my DVR to record everything my family finds interesting. But I pay for this convenience. You are going to trade time every week 'hunting' shows that I find just sitting on my DVR each week. After a while - you may go back. Some people invest in a HTPC so they can record antenna-based shows. They count themselves clever for spending $1,000-$2,000 to create a system to skip cable - but they have to constantly fiddle with it, deal with the noise, etc.

[kg7or]

"All" the live TV channels? No way that they're free. That includes both over-the-air (OTA) and pay-TV channels, and you're going to have to pay something to someone to get them "all."

The current live broadcasts on your local OTA stations are generally unavailable on the Internet or anywhere else, other than with an OTA antenna or in your pay-TV subscription.

As some of the other answers indicate, you *can* get a vast number of old TV programs and movies from various Internet resources, but you won't get the current episodes of major TV network series.

The cheapest option for quality HD television reception is a very good antenna, whatever is right for your particular location. That will get you your local OTA channels in the best HD available from any source other than a Blu-ray disk.

For anything more than that, you'll be paying something to someone, like an Internet provider fee and a subscription payment to something like Netflix.