Netflix and Hulu offer a lot of streaming choices, but they don’t have everything you’d ever want. Also you have to pay for Netflix, so maybe you don’t want to do that. Fortunately for you, Lifehacker found some streaming services out there that aren’t quasi-legal Eastern European piracy sites (that’s just for sports anyway) that still bring you entertaining shows and movies from the past and present. Whether you want nostalgia, more current cartoons or indie movies that are too weird for Netflix, you’re covered.
For starters, you can get all the 90s nostalgia you could possibly handle (short of a physical replication of Empire Records) with Nick Reboot, a streaming service that plays 90s and early-2000s Nickelodeon on a streaming schedule. So you won’t be able to pick whatever show you want at any time, but it’s not like you could do that back when you were watching cartoons on TV anyway. There is an on-demand service that you can pay for as well, but this is all about being a freeloader, right? Right.
If you’re more of a Cartoon Network person, you can use CN Reboot, which is the same service but for Cartoon Network’s older slate of shows. You can also use Watch CN, which is Cartoon Network’s official streaming site, in order to watch a few offerings of more modern shows like Adventure Time if you don’t want to try to torrent them or fear the video store person will look at you weird for being a grown-up who’s renting Adventure Time DVDs. You’re not though, don’t worry.
Of course, cartoons are only so long. Sometimes you want a movie, and there are services like SnagFilms and Crackle, among others, that stream movies for free. Crackle is owned by Sony and offers movies ranging in quality from Ghostbusters to Godzilla 200 and Ball Out: Gary The Tennis Coach, so you know, a crapshoot. SnagFilms offers more movies on the independent side of things and according to Lifehacker leans more heavily towards the documentary side. So you can get smart while hiding inside from winter and emerge into the spring an irritating know-it-all butterfly. Anyway, check out the whole list Lifehacker has, because these movies aren’t going to watch themselves, will they?