Dallas Cowboy Fan Hacked the Game With a Key Ring

If you've missed the mass complaints on social media, the world is in an uproar with Hulu at the moment over their sudden and considerable subscription price increases.

@ventureswmike #Hulu #Netflix #priceincrease #stream #noads #FYP ♬ Oh No - Kreepa

The jump in price is pretty much across the board. Regular ad-based Hulu is going to $14/month, ad-free to $18/month, and Hulu Live is jumping as high as $90/month in October. Understandably, the core group of cord-cutters that left cable subscriptions behind for cheap streaming are up in arms about this. So much so, Hulu is losing subscriptions as a knee-jerk reaction, which leaves more than a few people in the cold as far as entertainment goes, particularly live sports.

Here's a free solution.

One Dallas Cowboy fan figured out a great hack to watch his team have their one good game this year, and it started out with a tiny staple. Popping any metal object into your tv's antenna connector can work to access the over-the-air programming. He was able to bypass Hulu's price increase by pulling the game free out of thin air.

@eatoutwithjason Not my normal content but I was shocked this worked so well and had to share. #freetv #streamingwars #fyp ♬ original sound - Eat Out With Jason

I'm going to shoot straight with you, this probably isn't going to work in a small rural town like Lawton, Duncan, Altus, etc... Odds are this tv hacker is in a big metropolis like Dallas where tv signals are bouncing around at their strongest strength.

You and I talked about antenna TV back in July. It works surprisingly well in Lawton, but it requires a few basics.

The basics.

One, you're going to need an antenna.

Two, that's really all you need. Just the antenna.

In Southwest Oklahoma, it works shockingly well. Out west in Altus, most of the OKC channels get rebroadcast into the area and that provides reliable entertainment for free.

In Lawton, we're sort of stuck to our Texoma-based channels. Some (KFDX, KSWO, KJTL) work really well most of the time. There are tons of additional channels that piggyback off the networks too. One in particular reruns popular 90s sitcoms almost 24/7--love that channel.

Others, like KAUZ, are nearly unwatchable. I've talked with the KAUZ general manager in the past, and he assured us that they were working to correct the broadcast problems, but it has been over three years with no improvement to their crappy broadcast signal. I suspect there's no need to rush spending money to fix a free service.

How hard is the installation?

It's not hard at all if you're a little handy. I drilled a hole in my house to run my antenna up the chimney. If you can drill holes, you're golden.

Depending on how fancy you want to get, they make antenna mounts for every situation. It's ridiculously easy to make your own cables, but there is a limit to how many TVs you can run off of one antenna.

Every time you connect a TV, you effectively split the signal. In large metro areas where the signals originate, that's not a big deal... but when you're out in the great wide BFE of SWOK, it's ideal to have one antenna per TV, but there's a fix for that too.

There are companies that make antenna streaming devices. I ran my antenna into one of these, branded as HDHomeRun. It connects to the antenna and then funnels the signal on your wifi. If you run smart streaming devices like Firesticks, your analog TV is accessed through a digital app anywhere the wifi reaches.

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If you think your streaming services are also getting too damn high, there are always free options. I'm also a big fan of pirating torrents, but that's something you'll have to discover on your own.

Best of luck. May the odds be ever in your favor.