The PlayOn Blog

When folks consider streaming as an alternative to cable, the discussion most often revolves around what they'll miss...what are they able to watch with cable that they might not be able to watch without?  For today's post, I'm going turn that around...what can one watch streaming, that isn't available via cable?
 
The answer:  a crap ton
 
My family ditched cable nearly 6 years ago...It took some getting used to at first, but after a while we came to realize just how much we could stream, that we would've never found flipping through channels on our cable box.  As a cable subscriber, choices were made for us...and we naturally gravitated toward the 'new' shows. 
 
Here at Channel Master headquarters, we dig on The Muppets.  We recently rented and watched the latest Muppet movie (Muppets Most Wanted, available via Amazon VOD).  After watching, my wife and I couldn't keep the nostalgia at bay and found ourselves wanting to watch some classic Muppet Show episodes with the kiddos. 
 
For those of you with cable, try searching for The Muppet Show.  To make it easy, you can use these links for the Time Warner and Comcast/Xfinity programming guide:
 
Time Warner Program Guide
Comcast Program Guide
 
Find anything?  No?  Neither did I. :)
 
Now paste the following into the address bar of your browser:
 
https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=muppet+show&lclk=long
 
Disco!  Virtually every full episode of  The Muppet Show available to stream. 
You can use that url as a template and replace 'muppet' and 'show' with anything you might be looking for – just insert a '+' between each word.  For example, looking for The Great Space Coaster?
 
Just use this:
 
https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=great+space+coaster&lclk=long
 
After you've found the shows you're looking for, you can use the PlayOn browser extension to mark, cast or record. 
 
You can even create custom channels by clicking on the 'Edit' button in the PlayOn browser window and then creating a new folder with a custom name.  Then add episodes of the same show to that specific folder (by clicking on that edit button when marking each video).  Now, when browsing the PlayMark channel at your TV, rather than just seeing a YouTube folder loaded with videos, you can browse folders specific to each show. 
 
Enjoy...and happy streaming!
 
Mine's Sgt. Floyd Pepper, by the way ;)