SWITCH TO FREE STREAMING SERVICES
Freevee
www.snipca.com/43877
Previously called IMDB TV, Amazon’s Freevee streaming service is now available for Fire TV, Google TV, Roku and Apple TV+, as a Prime Video channel on other smart TV platforms and in your web browser, and as an Android and IOS app. This makes it ideal if you like to stream on different devices, and once you sign in with your Amazon account you can start and resume viewing content wherever and whenever you want.
Because Freevee is free to view, you might expect its content to be obscure and poor quality, but its regularly updated library includes plenty of TV shows and films you’ll actually have heard of and want to watch.
At the time of writing, these included all seven seasons of US comedies 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, every original episode of The Addams Family (see screenshot top right), The Dukes of Hazzard and Little House on the Prairie, and plenty of horror films and history documentaries. You can also stream ‘live’ Freevee channels, though these mainly comprise reality shows such as Homes Under the Hammer and cheesy old series like Baywatch.
The biggest problem with Freevee is that it frequently (but randomly) interrupts your viewing with repetitive and annoying ads. When watching online, you can skip these ads by installing the browser extension Freevee Skipper (www.snipca.com/43534 – see Issue 643, page 43), but in the Freevee apps you need to put up with them as a trade-off for getting free content.
Rakuten TV
www.snipca.com/43884 Rakuten combines a paid-for streaming service, which lets you rent or buy films, and a free one. The latter is much better than you might expect, with lots of interesting and entertaining stuff to watch, if you’re willing to put up with the “carefully selected ads”.
It includes original Rakuten content such as Seve, a documentary about golf master Seve Ballesteros; free films including Stephen King adaptation A Good Marriage (see screenshot below below), which costs £4.99 to buy on other services; and TV shows such as sci-fi series Andromeda and cult Japanese cooking competition Iron Chef.
You can also stream nearly 100 live TV channels for free, including 18 devoted to films and others to news, sport, music, lifestyle and more. These aren’t bad quality, either – when we tuned in on a Wednesday morning, viewing options included Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, the US version of Deal or No Deal and Teletubbies. Even Rakuten TV’S store is impressive, offering all the latest films, and discounts on lots of older movies.
Rakuten TV is available to stream through its website and through its apps for Android, IOS and most smart TV and streaming devices (though not Fire TV), and you don’t even need an account.
Plex
www.snipca.com/43886
Contradicting the notion that you need to pay for high-quality content, Plex’s free streaming service just keeps getting better and is available to watch on nearly all desktop and mobile devices, streaming sticks and smart TVS. It now features more than 250 live TV channels, some of which are provided by Rakuten TV, and with recent additions from US TV network AMC.
The comprehensive TV Guide makes it easy to browse what’s on – either by day or across categories such as Entertainment, Lifestyle, ‘News & Opinion’ and Movies, with 30 film channels to choose from.
You can also stream content on-demand in Plex’s ‘Movies & Shows’ section (see screenshot above), which now includes more than 50,000 titles. Unsurprisingly, there are currently lots of festive flicks such as It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, but other highlights include the Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood, Ricky Gervais sitcom Extras and British drama series Ripper Street. Plex’s free service is supported by ads, so you’ll need to disable your ad blocker.
Pluto TV
www.snipca.com/43879
Pluto TV is completely free to watch – supported by ads – and doesn’t require you to sign up, which means you can dip in and out as you please. It offers more than 250 live TV channels, which are organised into categories such as Entertainment,
Comedy, Food, News and Sport, and the films in its 16 movie channels are just as good as many of the titles you see on Netflix.
As well as browsing the TV guide for something good to watch, you can also watch a wide range of programmes on-demand and use Pluto TV’S new Search tool to find specific shows.
Although much of its content is from the US, the service now features several series targeted at British viewers and Anglophiles, including the Channel 4 comedy-drama Ackley Bridge, the
Reggie Perrin remake starring Martin Clunes and Channel 5 documentaries on channels such as Cops, Exploring Britain (see screenshot right) and ‘Britain at War’.
Pluto TV is available on smart TVS, Android and IOS devices, and online.
Wedotv
www.snipca.com/43889
Less sophisticated than the other free streaming services we’ve recommended – with a big Netflix-style video player on its homepage showing previews and trailers – Wedotv nevertheless offers a decent, regularly updated selection of films (see screenshot below).
Browse categories such as ‘Thrills and Spills’, Creature Features and ‘Movies to Make you Smile’ and you’re certain to find a few gems – or at least titles you recognise. We spotted horror film
Paranormal Activity, Stephen Fry in Wilde and Disney cartoon All Dogs Go to
Heaven. Wedotv also features documentaries about wildlife, celebrities and motoring, and sporting highlights.
There are Wedotv apps for Android, IOS and most smart TVS and streaming sticks, or you can watch in your browser. As with other free services, the content is often preceded and interrupted by ads, but you don’t need an account to view it.
Documentary Heaven
www.snipca.com/43891
If you like watching documentaries on Netflix and Prime Video, this site features a huge collection of factual films embedded from Youtube, Vimeo and Dailymotion - including BBC classics no longer available on iplayer.
These are organised into categories such as Crime, History, Nature, Technology and War, as well as lists of the
Top 100 as rated by other users, and the best documentaries of 2022 (see screenshot above). The latter includes WWII from Space, Putin: A Russian Spy
Story and Who Are the Real Peaky Blinders?.
Picture quality depends on the original upload, and occasionally you’ll see a ‘Video not available’ message when a film has been removed or geo-blocked. But there’s plenty of interesting content to explore and you can get email updates when new documentaries are added.