Fuzzy’s Financial Blog

It is possible you have been looking at your cable bill and wanting to trim the bill down. You then look online and watch a few shows on Hulu and think it would be great if you could watch your Hulu on your tv and just ditch the cable company. Well there are a few ways of doing this.

If you have an Xbox 360 you probably already know you can watch your Netflix online content through it on your tv. But what about Hulu  and if you have a Playstation 3 or Wii what can you do. Aside from getting an HTPC and dealing with all of that there are cheaper and maybe a little easier way. With such programs as Tversity, Boxee, or Playon you can watch Hulu and many other internet tv free providers on your tv. There are also devices like Roku out or coming out that provide watching Netflix on them and an expanding content providers.

Tversity turns your computer into a multimedia server. It is a free program and there is a Pro version which is currently free but you can pay a fee to get a license also if you like the program. Tversity Pro adds the ability to stream Hulu video and alot of other internet media providers to a UPnP capable device such as an XBox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii among other devices. From some testing I found that Tversity streams files on your hard drive seamlessly while the Hulu streaming is a little choppy. Tversity also serves up your audio, video and picture content to these devices if they have the capability.

Playon from Mediamall is similar to Tversity in that it is also a multimedia server. With this program you have a 14 day trial before you have to pay $39.99 for it but if you wait you can catch a $10 discount on it. Hulu streams fairly well and I didn’t see any choppyness, one current bug which many people have reported and I experienced is the Hulu black screen of death as some are calling it when it goes to a black screen as a pause but never recovers and requires restarting the whole video, mediamall says they are working to correct this issue. Through plugins you can add additional content providers and there are currently many out there.

Boxee is a free program to run on your computer and control the different content providers in one application. I have not tried this program yet but it in order to display on your tv you need to hook up your computer to the tv.

I am sure there are more options out there and more extender type devices. Do some shopping around and you should be able to find your best deal for your situation.  I totally believe that through these options you can replace your cable tv as long as you maintain a broadband or high speed internet service.