What Are TV Everywhere Apps?
Did you know that you can use your Roku, Fire TV, Android TV box or Apple TV to replace extra cable boxes in your house? If you said no than you would be no different from a lot of consumers out there. After all when you set up a cable subscription what do they always ask you? “How many TV’s do you have?”
The implication of course is that if you plan to actually watch your cable TV channels anywhere besides the one place in your house where the cable box is, then you better be ready to pay more. Well, in most cases this is far from the truth of the matter. There are tons of network TV apps designed for customers with pay TV services that allow you to watch programming on-demand and in a number of cases live. They are called TV Everywhere apps.
There are TV everywhere apps for the vast majority of popular channels. If you are a sports fan you will find apps for ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports (with links to all NBC Sports related content like the Golf channel, Olympics channel etc), The NFL, The NBA and more. If you have premium movie channels you have access to almost all of them, showtime, HBO ePiX and STARZ all have apps you can sign into with your provider. And the list goes on. All you have to do is download the app or streaming channel to your device of choice and go to which ever website it prompts you to go to on a computer or wireless device using your pay tv provider credentials. If your provider participates you will either see it listed from the top or find it by searching. The biggest ones like Comcast or Spectrum are usually right at the top. But the hundreds of regional ones are searchable. Once find your provider select it and the computer will likely take you to the login screen for your provider. From there you will use which ever email address you used to sign up for the service and your password to sign in. It sounds far more complicated than it is.
Add the ones you need ignore the ones you don’t
The thing is that you hardly have to do this for every single channel you receive “just in case”. Just figure out what you actually like to watch and get the few apps the correspond. Most people don’t watch that many channels out of their lineup anyway. If you have a man cave and want to get your network and sports apps set up for the weekend put the half dozen or so in there and get ready for some Football, or Golf or Racing etc. If you like to watch movies while you fall asleep in the bedroom put a few movie options on, HBO, Hallmark, what ever suits you.
If you use these apps you will save quite a bit of money once you make up for the fact that you bought one or more extra pieces of equipment. Roku and Fire TV sticks are very affordable options to get set up without breaking the bank with multiple devices.
You might be able to get everything with one app
Some pay TV providers even have full apps built to deliver their services via branded apps. The two most notable ones are from Spectrum and Comcast/Xfiniti. In the case of these two services customers can access their full channel lineups and on demand features as though they were using their cable box. It is a really cool way to save money over time. The streaming boxes I have seen with this option are Roku and Apple TV. So this counts out Fire TV and Android TV devices. If you have either of these providers definitely try their apps. If a streaming device search for the name of your provider.
I would take a look at these options before tossing the extra boxes. And just a pro tip for you. If you have to return extra equipment keep an eye out for things like mall Kiosks. Often you can drop things off with them instead of waiting in a long line at a central office.
