Your Ultimate Guide To Streaming This Year's Academy Awards For Free

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On Sunday, avid film buffs and fashion fans will be tuning in to watch the Academy Awards. Most networks will air red carpet coverage at 7 pm ET. Commedienne Ellen Degeneres will kick of this year's festivities at 8:30 pm ET.

Typically, the Oscars air live on ABC but this year there will be a few streaming options that should satisfy chord-cutters.

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These are the most important ones you need to know.

Watch ABC

For the first time, ABC will stream the ceremony directly to its Watch ABC app and its web services but there's a catch. The streams will only be available in select markets for certain cable subscribers according to Variety.

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Here are the markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Fresno, Calif.

These are the cable providers working with ABC for the promotion:Comcast, Cablevision, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Midcontinent Communications, Verizon FiOS, Google Fiber and AT&T U-verse.

Provide proof you subscribe to one of these providers in those markets and you'll be able to watch the Oscars from your smartphone, TV, or tablet.

Verified viewers can watch the show for up to three days after it airs.

You can download Watch ABC for iOS, Android, Kindle, and Windows.

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Aereo

The Academy Awards classify as a live event so Aereo will be a great service to use to view it. With Aereo, viewers pay $8 a month to stream an unlimited amount of over-the-air TV to their smartphones, PC's and tablets. They can also use Aereo's DVR to record shows.

Unfortunately, Aereo is only available in select cities. You can sign up here.

CTV Go

The best international coverage is going to be in Canada. The CTV Go app will stream 10 hours of Oscar programming including the award ceremony hosted by Ellen Degeneres. You'll have to prove you have a cable account to watch the broadcast on the app but you can view the show on CTV's website as well.

You can download the app for iOS and Android.

Oscars.org

This may not be ideal for viewers who want the full Oscar experience but the main website of the Academy Awards will post video highlights during the telecast. Clips of the various musical performances and presentations will appear on the website 5-10 minutes after they air on TV. You can watch these clips on here.

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Hola

From anywhere in the world, you can use the Hola app to access one of the numerous channels broadcasting the Academy awards. Internet users have deployed this tool in accessing streaming sites like Hulu that could be blocked in certain countries and this could be used to watch any of the channels the Oscars are airing on all around the world.

The app is available for free on Google Chrome, Firefox, Android, iPhone and Windows.

Other options

Aereo's direct competitor FilmOn gives you access to 500 live streaming TV channels in multiple languages which would include the Oscar broadcast.

Customers can also purchase a Slingbox to stream the ceremonies to phones and tablets from your own cable subscription.

Sites like Sidereel could have a livestream of the show but the better bet for new videos would be YouTube. The quality might not be great but people may take videos with their phones and upload it to the site so periodically check this video hub throughout the night.

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