Learn How to Watch TV on Your iPhone or Android

Looking to catch up on the latest news, sports, and entertainment on your iPhone? What better way than to watch TV on your iPhone! When I say watch TV, I mean either watching prerecorded shows or watching live TV.
There are a whole slew of ways you can get content on your iPhone these days and I’ll try to break it down into something that makes sense to most people. For starters, let’s talk about live TV because that’s probably what most people were searching for before they came to this article.
Watch Live TV
When it comes to live TV, there are the local channels and then the cable channels. Let’s start with the local channels like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. The only way you can currently watch local channels live on your iPhone is if you have a cable subscription or have an OTA (Over the Air) antenna with a third-party streaming device.
The only exception to this rule is CBS because they offer a streaming service called CBS All Access for $5.99 a month that lets you watch CBS live and a bunch of other CBS content on demand.
cbs all access
Let’s talk about the first way to watch live local channels: over the air. First, you have to figure out if you get any local channels in HD over the air. You can find local OTA channels here. If you have a strong signal for the local channels you are interested in, then you’re in luck.
It’s easy to buy an OTA antenna and connect it to your HDTV at home, but to stream those OTA channels to your phone requires a bit more hardware. There are a couple of solutions out there like Simple.TV, Tablo, and HDHomeRun. None of these are very cheap, but they will get the job done. I’ve personally owned the first generation Simple.TV and it worked surprisingly well.
For those of you with a cable subscription, things are a bit easier. Firstly, there are a lot of apps that support logging in or authenticating with your cable subscription login. For example, you can download the CNN app and login with your cable provider info and watch CNN live.
The same thing goes for HBO Go, WatchESPN, Comedy Central and many more. If you are already getting HBO with your cable company, then you can log into their app using your cable provider account and watch everything at no extra charge.
You can also download the app from your cable provider and watch live TV. You may not be able to watch every channel on your phone that you have with your cable subscription, but it should be a decent selection. Here are the apps for some popular cable companies: