NBC, one of the earliest supporters of cord cutters, has updated its iPhone and iPad apps with Airplay support, allowing Apple TV owners to stream the network’s content to their TVs. The update makes the notion of dumping one’s cable company in favor of Apple TV more appealing, particularly because NBC grants unfettered access to full episodes for free without requiring a cable subscription.
The app contains episodes of the network’s most popular shows, like Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, The Voice, The Blacklist, and Community. Aside from full episodes, the app also has highlights and previews from late-night shows. So far, the service is only available in the United States, so the rest of the world is out of luck.
This kind of convenience was previously reserved for subscription services such as Hulu Plus. If you were wading in the abyss of truly free content, your options were to watch NBC shows online via the small screens of your phone, tablet, or laptop. Unless, of course, you connected your computer to your TV with an HDMI cable, but that is so 2009. If you don’t have Apple TV, you’re not completely left out. There are existing workarounds to watching NBC shows on your TV, such as tab-casting on the Chromecast.
