If you've cut the cord recently, you might've done it,
you probably did it, to save some money.
So, instead of spending a bunch of money on expensive apps
to watch TV and movies and stuff,
you can actually get a ton of free content
on your Android TV platform.
Today we're using the Nvidia Shield to take a look at this,
but these should work on any Android TV platform.
Let's dive in.
(upbeat techno music)
So as we get started on this,
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Now, today for the Android TV platform,
we're going over the top 10 free Android TV apps.
Now there are hundreds, maybe thousands,
of options out there for Android TV.
These are just 10 of my favorites that I've picked out
that should get you started
with a lot of free content available to you.
So as we do this, the first thing to know is
how to download an app on Android TV.
If you already know how to do this,
just skip ahead a couple minutes,
but, right now, what we're gonna do is
let's pick an app, say, I don't know, NASA app.
Search for that, and, oh, they don't have it here,
but NASA has an IPTV app,
you have all these different apps.
Okay, let's do some wallpaper.
When you find these apps,
you can find it in the Play Store, here,
download it, and it's ready to go.
I'm not gonna download this one right now,
I've done a bunch here.
So, to go to my home screen,
I hit this button, here, on the Nvidia Shield,
the circle button, takes me to my home screen.
So I've got all my apps here, this is my favorite apps,
I should say, if I hold that circle button,
it will show me all the apps I have downloaded,
so we could go through it that way,
and take a look at these.
But, I kind of have them in order here (laughs), so.
I'm gonna skip past a lot of these, you know,
like Netflix, this is a paid app,
this comes downloaded on your Nvidia Shield
or whatever other device you have.
I'm gonna skip past the regular ones,
YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Music,
and I'm gonna start with my first pick for a good free app,
and that is Plex.
Plex is an interesting one because
its not just free content gathered from around the web,
this is where you can upload your own content.
So, if you have spent years gathering DVDs, and Blu-rays,
and then converting those into digital files,
or if you have digital files that you've gathered
from around the web,
you can actually load those into Plex
and have them available to play in your Android TV platform.
So, on my Nvidia Shield, here,
now I can go look at my home videos, movies, photos,
that sort of thing.
You guys don't get to see my (laughs), my personal stuff,
but you can also go in here,
and they've got recommended podcasts and web shows,
news stories that you can check out as you go through Plex.
So it does pull in some content aggregated
from around the web, in addition to the stuff
that you can load in yourself.
Next up is Twitch.
This will be familiar to any gamers,
which is perfect for the Nvidia Shield.
If you bought this, you're likely a gamer, (laughs) so.
Twitch, you're probably already familiar with this.
But yes, it is available on Android TV.
If you enjoy video games, if, like me,
you are the third of three boys,
and so you never got to play video games,
you just had to watch video games, this is a lot of fun.
Now, you can go pick whatever your favorite games are.
You know, World of Warcraft, obviously, is popular.
My favorite would be StarCraft II.
Big StarCraft II fan.
And so now I can go check out livestreams of tournaments
or just people playing online
and, you know, going through their gameplays.
So, Twitch is a lot of fun.
Now, number three is Steam Link.
Similarly, this is going to be for gamers as well.
If you have a Steam account,
and you're using that to play video games on your PC,
you can actually link that PC,
your Steam account in that PC,
to your Nvidia Shield, or your other Android TV device,
and Steam Link will allow you to play that.
In the case of the Nvidia Shield,
it comes with a game controller
that you can use for that sort of thing.
Otherwise, you might have to get
a different Bluetooth controller similar to this one.
Steam actually sells a Bluetooth controller
that you can use for this.
So Steam Link is a great option for that.
Next up is Tellybean.
Tellybean is a video conferencing, or video calling, app.
It's really easy to set up.
All you do is on, for instance, on this Nvidia Shield,
its got a USB port on the back.
You plug a webcam into that, set it on top of your TV,
and Tellybean will allow you
to video call right there on your TV.
So, you don't have to use your phone,
you don't have to use your computer if those are tied up,
or, for some reason, you'd rather use it on the big screen,
so that you have a lot of screen real estate
for that video calling.
Tellybean allows you to do that.
Great option there.
These two kind of go together, obviously.
PBS and PBS Kids.
I'll talk a little bit more
about channel specific downloads,
but PBS might be my favorite one,
just for sheer amount of family-friendly content
that you get, can get, either through PBS or PBS Kids.
So, in this case, you just login here.
It's gonna have you connect your,
it's gonna have you login at pbs.com, activate the app,
so that it knows where you are logging in from.
That way you get, not just nationwide PBS content,
but you can get your local content as well.
In my case, KUED.
So, whatever's airing on KUED,
here in the Salt Lake City area, I can get that.
Wherever you are, it'll link that local content,
as well as the national stuff.
Pretty cool.
PBS Kids, obviously, that's a no-brainer if you have kids.
All the "Daniel Tiger's" ever.
It's great.
All right, next up, Puffin TV.
This is a browser.
If you need to browse the internet
on your Android TV device.
It's kinda tricky because there aren't,
there are a lot of browser options out there,
but not all of them are optimized for a TV experience.
Puffin is optimized for that.
So, I can come into the Puffin browser,
I can start searching, I can start,
I can go directly to a URL,
or it will curate some content for me,
if I want to go through a few different categories, here.
It'll show me my recently viewed stuff.
If I want to view a webpage that I was on recently,
I can do that, and I can navigate it here,
just with my remote or with the game controller as well.
So, next up is kind of another two-for.
And, this one is the Sideload Launcher.
The Sideload Launcher is,
this is gonna take a little explanation.
Sideloading, if you're not familiar with this,
this is something you should get familiar with
because you may need to use it.
It's used for any time an app that you want to use
on your Android TV is not available in the Android TV store,
you can sideload it.
So, for instance, Google Drive.
For some reason, that was not available
or is not available on the Android TV platform,
but if you want to access your Google Drive files,
here, on your TV, you're going to need to sideload that.
It's a sorta complicated process
that we're not gonna go through today,
but you would download that app elsewhere,
and then use something like the X-plore file explorer
to bring it into your Android TV.
But once it's there, its not gonna show up in your homepage.
So, what do you do?
You use something like the Sideload Launcher.
And that's gonna pull together all of these different apps
that you have sideloaded.
Now, you can navigate to those apps.
So, this is gonna be vital,
something like Sideload Launcher and X-plore
would be vital if you want to do sideloading,
get both of these.
There are others out there,
these are just the ones that are easy and popular,
and the ones that I would recommend.
Next up are a couple that I recommend
for just about any platform out there.
Pluto TV and Tubi TV are available, not just on Android TV,
but on all the other platforms as well.
And they are great,
if you're looking for free content on your device.
So, Pluto TV is free live TV.
So, they have scheduled TV, whoops, let's turn that down.
They have scheduled TV, just like you're used to
with your cable or satellite subscription.
They have different channels that you can go through.
So, if you wanna watch Spotlight,
you just pop in and watch it like you would elsewhere.
And it is commercial-supported, again,
just like you're used to on cable or satellite.
And you can browse through, check out different free TV,
free movies and TV shows, again, commercial-supported.
But, you can scroll through that,
kind of like you would with Netflix
or something along those lines.
Speaking of which, that's exactly what Tubi TV is.
Is, essentially, an ad-supported version of Netflix.
It doesn't have the same movies and TV shows as Netflix,
you know, it is a different app, but, in this,
you can scroll through different genres,
different categories, pick a show,
and if you wanna watch that, it is gonna be free to you,
but commercial-supported.
So, if you're okay with dealing
with a few commercials here and there,
then Tubi and Pluto are wonderful options.
And then, last up, again, it's kind of a two-for category,
or it's as many as you want.
These are channel specific apps.
I pulled a couple here, BBC America and The CW.
There are a lot of other channels out there that do this.
ABC, I know, has an app that let's you watch
all their shows, commercial-supported, for free.
Eh, well, all, most, some, it depends on the app.
But, for instance, with The CW, if I pop in here,
it's gonna give me a ton of different shows
that I can scroll through and see.
So, if I wanna watch the latest episode of "The Outpost",
I kinda started that a little while ago,
I can watch that, commercial-supported, at no charge.
All you have to do is download the app.
So, it's pretty sweet.
With all these options, you've got no excuse
for paying a ton of money if you cut the cord.
That being said, a lot of us are still gonna pay
for Netflix and Hulu or whatever,
but if you do want to get away
from paying a bunch of money for your entertainment,
there are a lot of free options out there
on your streaming device.
So, on the Android TV, these are the 10 that I recommend.
If you have any others that you would recommend for people,
just hit the comments below,
and let me know what your favorites are.
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