Summary
- Stirr TV offers 5,000+ hours free on-demand and ~950 FAST live channels to browse
- Clean, grid-style homepage with hover descriptions and trailers for big upcoming titles
- Strong local station feeds and quirky FAST channels, but movie/TV library skews niche/low-budget
There is so much content to be watched that it’s actually hard to keep up. You’ll never be able to watch everything. You probably have to keep a list going on different streaming services of all the content that people have recommended for you or you found on your own while searching for different content. You flag it, move on because you’re not in the mood to watch it at that point in time, and continue on your day.
But what if you could go back and actually watch the shows and movies that you want to? It would be ideal for everyone to be able to keep track of it all. Free streaming is one of the best ways to keep track of all the shows that you might not have been able to watch before and also plenty of movies that you either loved or didn’t see. You can hunt those down on paid streaming, on places like Netflix or Disney+. But you can also take your shot at free streaming.
A free movie and TV streaming service that doesn’t get as much hype as others like Pluto TV or Tubi is Stirr TV. It was originally owned by Sinclair Broadcasting Group who then sold it to Thinking Media. While it has a ways to go in some areas, it has some strong parts that should be highlighted.
It has a great layout
The interface is easy to use on the homepage
When you open up either the site or app, Stirr TV brings you right to a main homepage with big grid-style boxes to show the titles. There are descriptions available as soon as you hover over the title, giving you a full breakdown on what the content is. What you’ll notice about Stirr TV is it wants to hype up some big name titles that it doesn’t have. You’ll see in the picture that it is touting Project Hail Mary, a movie starring Ryan Gosling that doesn’t come out until next year. You can watch the trailer on the app.
The same goes for F1, which did come out this year and is streaming exclusively on Apple TV+. But you can watch the trailer on the homepage of Stirr TV. There is regular content available, and it does have it organized by genre, making it easier to find some content that you might be interested in. The app doesn’t always look this good, but you start strong when you open it.
It has local affiliate stations
This is a massive reason why this appeals to me
As mentioned above, this streaming service used to be owned by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the owner of many local stations throughout the U.S. Stirr TV’s local affiliate stations provide you with inside looks at cities around the country. It states that Stirr Cities is a category that is going to be approved at some point this year on the app,. But there are already a number of ones that are available on there, so I’m not sure how Stirr is going to expand on them.
But you can scroll down in the section and see more local affiliate stations, including a Sinclair specific group as well as ones from Hubbard and Griffin as well. I used to watch WJAC based out of Johnstown, Pennsylvania when I was in college at Penn State. This gives me the opportunity to catch up on the local Central PA news that I hadn’t paid much attention to since I graduated. It is a nice touch to be able to catch up with the area again. But there are plenty of other cities, such as Washington, DC, Minnesota-St. Paul, Albany and Rochester, NY, Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, Asheville, NC, and even Steubenville, OH.
Their TV show genres are a bit random
Stirr can still provide you with plenty to watch
If you click on the TV Shows menu, you’ll have the option of filtering by genre. You can go through the grid interface and see all the shows listed. But you can also just choose to look at genre-specific picks. The genres available on Stirr TV are:
- Paranormal Series
- Default Category
- Animation Series
- Sports Series
- Mystery Series
- Pure Adrenaline Shows
- STIRR Kids
- Nature Documentary Series
- Educational Series
- Food and Health Series
Stirr has a strong collection of reality series or true-life style shows. Many of them are meant to be educational rather than narrative. Shows like Epic Trails or Everyday Essentials provide real-life looks at things. You’re not going to find sitcoms on Stirr TV, at least not yet. In that aspect, it lacks compared to others. But if you’re happy to watch any kind of free on-demand TV, you’ll be fine.
The movie selection is wild
I don’t think I’d heard of a single movie on there
Many of the titles that you recognize are only going to be the trailers for those movies. There are a lot of good nature documentaries, which is great for fans of those. I do love a nature documentary, so I did watch Wonders of the Arctic and enjoyed it. Many of the movies are from the last three years and many of them are low-budget, straight to streaming type of films.
Movies like Strangers at the Door, Loco, Aggressive Behavior, and Range War are some of the films available to stream right now. If you had heard of those before just now, I’d be impressed. Still, there could be some hidden gems among them. I haven’t done the full research of checking everything out. But I tend to spend my Stirr TV time with local news or the live channels.
The Live channels are more enjoyable
Stirr has an eclectic array of channels
Similar to other free streaming services, Stirr TV’s “live” channels are not actually live news. It is a collection of free ad-supported streaming television stations (FAST), meaning the channels that show specific series. Channels like Yachting TV, USA Today, Nightmare Network, and Gags are all content-driven FAST channels.
It’s easier to find something that you’re interested in with these channels, in my opinion. There are 950 channels to be exact, so if you can’t find something to watch, that’s pretty much on you. There is so much to be able to view at any given time. While you won’t be able to go back and watch some of these if you don’t start them at the exact time, channels might very well show the same episode later on in the day, giving you another chance. If you aren’t picky about the content that you want to stream and are open to watching lower-end shows and movies, Stirr TV could be a good option for you.
