6 SITES FOR FREE TV AND MOVIES WHILE YOU’RE STUCK AT HOME

Cord-cutting was supposed to save money. But these days, just as people are watching more, they’re paying for streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus. Added together, those six cost at least $52 a month.

Or you could be getting your TV and movies free — legally.

What’s the catch? Some of these services show ads. Recent blockbusters are scarce, and the catalogs are usually padded with directto-video, not-exactlyOscar-bait efforts like “Frankenfish” and “Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin’ With the Godmother.”

Still, there’s a world of watch-worthy stuff on these services, all of it free. They’re available on the web, or if you prefer watching on a TV, most work with an Apple TV, a Roku box or an Amazon Fire Stick.

1. IMDb TV

The free site, owned by Amazon, plays a couple of ads per movie but rewards you with boatloads of big-name flicks like“Spotlight,” “Memento,”“My Girl,”“Airplane” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”Good classic TV awaits, too, like “Lost,”“Murder, She Wrote,”“Columbo” and “Friday Night Lights.” imdb.com/tv

2. Tubi

Owned by Fox, this service teems with terrific titles, not all from the Pleistocene era. You can find “The Big Short,”“Kill Bill,”“Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”and four installments of the“Sharknado” oeuvre. You can browse useful categories like “Not on Netflix,” “Highly Rated on Rotten Tomatoes,” “Black Cinema,”“Cult Classics”and “Musicals.”This also seems to be a retirement home for 1960s TV, like “Laugh-In,”“The Green Hornet” and “That Girl.”The price: Four minutes’ worth of ads per hour. tubitv.com

3. Kanopy

This service is focused on documentaries (6,000 of them) and independent films. You sign in with a library or college ID card; no ads appear to disrupt the highbrow streaming satisfaction. The catalog makes you feel as if you’re right there at Sundance:“Lady Bird,” “Moonlight,”“Room,”“Ex Machina” and so on. Documentaries include “Queen of Versailles,”“Leviathan” and Ken Burns. kanopy.com

4. Crackle

With a block of ads playing every 20 minutes or so, Crackle offers a rotating collection of 700 movies (“10 Cloverfield Lane,”“Gattaca,” “Girl, Interrupted,”seven“Friday the 13th”movies) and 4,500 old TV episodes. crackle.com

5. The Roku Channel

Roku sells set-top boxes but offers this free “channel” to anyone online. Each category (“Comedies,” “War Movies”and so on) appears on one row of tiles: TV and films mixed together. If you can handle eight ads an hour, you’ll find treasures like “Memento,”“Purple Rain,”“Contact,” “The Shining”and“Dirty Harry.” therokuchannel.roku.com

6. Pluto

ViacomCBS’ free site offers two modes: First is a guide grid that impersonates cable-TV listings. Each of 250“channels”offers a stream of films or TV shows in one category: Action, Comedy, Reality, Animals and so on. The other mode, On Demand, offers a parade of Clinton-era hits like“Johnny Mnemonic,”“Gattaca”and“The Birdcage,”plus a trove of TV. pluto.tv