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My family cut the cord probably 10 years ago.<br />
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Currently we use a mix of paid, shared paid (login sharing), and uhhhh, let's say "not paid" options.<br />
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For paid it's the typical stuff - YouTube premium (keeps excessive ads away from the kids), Prime (free with prime...), Disney, Netflix, etc. The big hitters that have lots of new and existing content that covers 80% of our needs.<br />
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At one point or another we've shared logins or tried free trials for the other mid-tier ones like Discovery, Paramount, Crave, Apple, etc. These services only seemed to have a small handful of interesting content and once we got through it, that was it.<br />
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We're in Canada though, so 100% paid isn't always an option - even if we COULD pay for everything, not everything is available at any price. Canada doesn't get access to a lot of the content that the USA does. In fact, region locking content and licensing issues is the number one reason why we use "not paid" options.<br />
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Right now we supplement our paid streaming with a Fire Stick 4k Max that has an app back-loaded onto it called Stremio which is a streaming style interface for content. There's an add-in called Torrentio (they like their "io's" I guess) that pulls in all the content it offers. We additionally pay for a service called "Real Debrid" which I honestly can't remember what it does other than make everything work properly. Probably some kind of aggregator service or something. The end result is an app on our firestick which could easily replace 100% of all the streaming services out there.<br />
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Despite Stremio being quite able to replace, effectively, all streaming services we currently pay for, we still pay for and often use the paid ones simply because paid, official services just works better. It's more reliable, easier to access from anywhere, works across all devices, our kids "get it" easier, and we don't object to paying for the content we consume when good options exist.<br />
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Sports is the sore spot though. No services exists that will give us the content we want. My wife and I were loving the WNBA this year (I was a Clark fan, she was a Reese fan - our marriage somehow survived the season). I was credit card "in hand" looking at the WNBA service and then I realized not every game is played on it. There are black outs and local only games and bla bla bla - bullshit. I'd pay very good money for all of it but I'm not paying a penny for only some of it. I've had the same issues with Hockey and other sports. It shouldn't be hard to put every F*cking game on a single service dedicated to a single sport.<br />
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I've used a number of options to fill the sports gap - IPTV (paid, but still not legal) wasn't bad but IPTV just sucks. Bad interfaces, generally lower definition even if it advertises high def, bad buffering issues, wonky tv guides, channels drop when you're mid-show, hunting and pecking to find what you actually know is on, somewhere. It was nice having access to an almost unlimited number of paid sports channels but the frustration was too high even at "close to free". There are websites that stream sports but they are ad-riddled nonsense that can be annoying to find a working stream in high quality that doesn't buffer.<br />
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I know it will never happen because of the business of sports licensing, but if there was a Netflix of sports - I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I don't even watch sports all that regularly but it would be nice to just have the option for when I do. I'm never getting cable again and I'm not paying for only some of the games, so I'll continue to slum it in the ad-riddled depths for now I guess.<br />
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I've used torrents for movies and shows and all the rest but (and this is going to sound old and sad) - but pirating just isn't what it used to be. The internet is not a free and lawless place anymore. It's a non-stop whack-a-mole between pirate hosts and content owners. I've largely given up on this stuff.
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</blockquote>Checkout "Smart Tube" it's a YT ad-blocker app... works great, also does some neat things such as removing clickbait thumbnails, skipping sponsored content, and have full control over it. Was going to buy premium but this is awesome and free.</div>
