If you've discovered our community, you're obviously looking for ways to cut the cord, say goodbye to your cable provider, and start saving money. In this guide I will give you various methods to do this, so let's get started.
The first thing you're going to need to know is there are legal ways to do this and there are "grey area" ways to do this. The grey area will save you substantially more money but it will require a bit more work and a little bit of learning. We will get into that later. For now, let's discuss the legal ways.
The very first thing you're going to need to do is figure out your internet speed and what you're paying for it. You want a minimum of 15mbps per device. We're going to be doing a lot of streaming, so you're going to want unlimited bandwidth. As a minimum I would say you want at least 50mbps download speed. I found a great ISP called Flash Services. Depending on your location, there will be different packages available. They are a reseller of the big providers like Rogers, Bell, Cogeco, Shaw, Videotron and others. What makes them worthwhile is when you refer a certain amount of people to them who also sign up, your internet service because 100% FREE. This too me about a year to attain but knowing you're working towards that is the ultimate way to save the maximum amount of money.
The other key piece of equipment you need to invest in is a good router. You want something with MiMo which helps prioritize your internet speed to devices that are streaming. For example if you have 6 people in the house and 2 are streaming, while 4 others are checking emails on their phone, it will prolly allocate your bandwidth to make sure the streaming devices have enough speed to stream without any issues. I recommend a Linksys or Netgear router. The 1900 series should be the minimum you get but if you have a larger home you will want to move up models. This is by far the most important piece of equipment in your house for cutting the cord because everything will run off of it. The stronger your router, the better your experience will be.
So you've signed up with Flash, you've got your router. Your internet service is ready to rock.
Now let's discuss how you're going to watch TV (the totally legal way).
You'll need a streaming device. A Smart TV counts, but as your needs expand your want to invest in a true streaming device. If you're on a budget, a 4K Firestick off Amazon will do. If you want sheer power and want to go top end, get yourself the nVidia Shield.
The first thing to realize is for most of your major network shows, you really don't NEED to watch them live as they air. You can, and there are ways to do that, but in the 21st century we've grown accustomed to watching things on demand. The majority of the time you've probably just PVRed your favorite shows and watched them later. We can cut out the PVR and realize that there are plenty of services that simply put the show up for you to watch on demand any time you want. Crave TV, Netflix, CTV, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus are all examples of services you can watch most shows and movies on. For the odd movie you can't find on those, you can simply log into Google Play and rent a movie.
Live sports? Well the NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA all have their own streaming service. Are they way over priced? Yes they are but you'll still end up saving money over ordering those packages on cable. DAZN is a great service that will cover the NFL and EPL for you. You can often find people willing to share accounts for the others to save some money also.
But, this is where the grey area really shines. There are IPTV services out there. IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television. Essentially these services stream channels over the internet and they've become so sophisticated that once you get used to them you'll probably never use anything else. Most of them cover all the comment we've discussed above for about $10-$15 a month, some even cheaper.
What's the catch? Well these services tend to get taken down and sued over the years. They are run by amateurs usually, not professionals so you won't get a perfect, no glitch cable experience but for $15 a month you'll get thousands of channels, movies, all your sports, pay per view events, etc. Hard to compete with that and those prices and so you can imagine the major companies are out to sue and take these services down. That's why protecting your privacy is a major part of using these services. Never, EVER sign up with your real name. Create a throw away email address with protonmail.com, and never pay with PayPal. Ideally you'll pay with Bitcoin, and that's where the learning curve comes into play. Yes you usually CAN use PayPal, but you shouldn't. If these services get sued, the first thing most will do is cut a deal and give up their customer database. This enables them to send you letters demanding money (usually $2500-$5000) or they will threaten to sue you for much more. Well, pretty hard for them to go after you if you've registered with a fake name, email address, paid with Bitcoin and you've been using a VPN so they don't even have your IP address.
We will get into Bitcoin in a minute but before we go there...if you're going the route of grey area streaming as many do, you want to invest in a VPN service. I recommend NordVPN.
As for Bitcoin. In Canada it's fairly easy. Use Shakepay. You simply etransfer yourself the funds, convert your CAD dollars into bitcoin, and you're done. They have plenty of tutorials to make it nice and easy. Paying this way isn't completely untraceable but you're highly unlikely to be bothered if you do it this way. It keeps you safe and protected.
There are plenty of IPTV services that can be found right here on Reddit. Just search and you will find them.
If you have any other questions, post them here in our community and we'll guide you! This post will be updated as new services and methods are added.
Enjoy!
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