Movies, Shows, Channels
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- Last Updated: Sunday, 30 October 2022 00:08
- Published: Wednesday, 17 June 2020 05:08
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Movies, Shows and TV channels
This section deals with Indian movies, shows, channels that you can avail of in USA. It also lists American shows, channels, movies that may be worth your time.To watch American movies/shows is really easy as too many options are available (listed below). Watching Indian movies/shows is little bit of work and costs a bit more.
Indian Movies/Shows: One of the first things, Indian look for in USA is watching Indian shows and movies. You can watch almost all Indian channels (i.e StarPlus, Zee, Sony, etc) here is USA, via a lot of companies. Below are some options:
1. Dish network (www.dishnetwork.com): This used to be the only provider of Indian channels for a long time. They provide you service via satellite (so you need an antenna on the rooftop). Their service is good. However they are expensive and cost you around $50/month. Definitely avoid it. I had been a dish network customer for 15 years, but recently ditched it, as there are a lot of low cost providers available. You can always call them, and tell them that you are cancelling service. To keep you they will offer you a lower price, but even with that, they are definitely expensive.
2. Sling (www.sling.com/international/desi-tv/hindi): This company is very popular, and provides Indian channels via your internet connection (streaming service). Service is good and I've never seen any interruption. It's also expensive at $60/month for Hindi gold package, which includes all channels. However, they allow you to watch on 3 TV simultaneously, so 3 people can share the same account, and bill will drop down to $20/month for each user. You need a roku player to connect to your tv depending on how old your tv is (if your tv isn't smart and hence has no wifi adapter on it + no sling app on it, then you need roku player, which can be had for $30 or less). You may not need a roku player if you have a TV which is smart (i.e which allows you to download different apps as sling, etc). Generally TVs since 2015 may not need roku player.
3. boxiptv (www.boxiptv.xyz): There are lot of IPTV providers whose concept is same as sling TV, but they offer you services at fraction of price. boxtv costs $270 for 5 year subscription. Comes out to $5/month, which is the cheapest I've seen so far. They also have bunch of Indian movies in their video section (most of them 1080p), with new ones being added weekly. So, you can watch almost all high quality Indian movies for no extra charge. They charge you in canadian dollars, o depending on your credit card, there may be a currency conversion fee (so use a credit card, which doesn't charge you any conversion fee). The only issue I found was that the streaming was laggy, and would get stuck every minute. After some investigation, it turned out that the streaming box provided by them doesn't have good pickup for routers placed at more than 10 ft apart. So, once I placed the router very close to their streaming box, I never had any lagging issue.
I haven't found a cheap source of watching Indian movies. boxiptv above has bunch of Indian movies, which you can defintely watch if you get their service. So far, netflix and amazon prime also offer limited selection of Indian movies.
4. towniptv (https://www.towniptve.com/): NOTE: the webaddr has a e in end i. it's "towniptve". I haven't tried this service, but looks very similar to boxiptv. They charge $340 for 5 years, which is more expensive than boxiptv. But it never hurts to aks them to match.
5. Netflix (www.netflix.com): They have a huge selection of American movies, and about 500 or so Indian movies. Though their selection of Indian movies is not that great, they have their own produced Indian shows, documentaries, etc which are quite good. It costs around $15/month to watch on 2 TV simultaneously. So, if 2 people share it, the cost would be $8/month. You can buy discounted netflix giftcards once in a while from Bestbuy, Walgreens, etc at 20% off. Then apply those to your account and you could save 20% or more on your bills. Since netflix goes month to month, and they have free monthly trial, you might want to get netflix free trial every year, watch all the movies/shows for free, and repeat the same next year. Really no need to pay $200/year for it.
6. Amazon (www.amazon.com): If you are amazon prime member, amazon movies is included in your subscription at no extra cost. They have even limited selection than netflix, but may be worth it for free. I would n't go and pay for this service, as you can find all the content of amazon on other subscription service (i.e on youtube, iptv, etc)
American Movies/shows: American channels (i.e ABC, FOX, etc) can be watched directly on TV by having an HD Antenna. Or also via apps if you have smart TV. They show a lot of Hollywood movies, shows, news, etc. American movies can also be watched via netlix or amazon. However, none of the latest release are available. For that you will have to go to a movie theatre. If you can wait a little longer (usually a month or two), you can watch them on DVDs.
1. redbox (www.redbox.com): They have stand alone redbox kisok outside/inside major grocery stores (kroger, walmart, etc), drug stores (walgreens, CVS, etc) and many other places. Most of the times they have coupon code for free rental. If you have Tmobile Tuesday app (by being a customer of T-mobile cellular services), about once a month, they send you such code. Also, if you sign up for their emails on their website, they will send you such codes. From time to time, you can find such codes on slickdeals.net (just search for redbox). I have never paid a single cent for renting movies on redbox, and have already watched 100 or so movies via them. Be careful with the return of the DVD though. You have until 9pm (local time) next day to return a DVD. If you miss that deadline, you have to pay next day rental which is expensive at $2/day. That is where Redbox makes most of the money.
2. Libraries: All local libraries in USA are free to join. They have huge selection of movies. If you are in one of the big cities or suburbs, you can get almost any popular movie which is more than 6 months old. They also keep a decent selection of Indian movies. This is your cheapest source for watching free movies.
3. Misc: Netflix, amazon, HBOMax, and many other streaming services provide a lot of movies and shows for a fixed monthly price. They make their own movies and shows and show it only on their platform to subscribers who pay for thier service. They charge monthly subscription fee of $10-$15 per month. However, there is no annual contarct, so you can get out at any time. What I do is to cancel the service after a couple of months, when I'm done watching all their good shows/movies. Then after a year or so, you may join again, if you see they have gotten any new shows/movies that are of interest to you. One word of caution is that these companies keep on removing their popular shows/movies from their services every month, and the one of the reason may be to force people to stay with the service long term. More info about these is in "Other Movies and shows" subsection.
Movie Websites:
Below are some of the best resources for finding everything about the movies:
IMDB: IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) is the most comprehensive website for finding details on any movie. If you need to look for any movie mentioned below, search it on imdb and match it with year and director as there are usually multiple movies with the same name. You should be able to find both Hollywood and Bollywood movies here.
Wikipedia is other very good resource for almost anything.
Rotten Tomatoes: This website has gotten very popular recently as it relies on people's vote and critic's vote to get the rating.
More categories under entertainment show popular bollywood and hollywood movies. I've also listed cheap theaters available around USA.I'll add more sections as I find more material.