Streaming services are on the rise in New Zealand, with more than a million subscribers to Netflix alone.

OPINION: Sky TV can't handle the truth. Earlier this week, it reported a slide in profits and the loss of almost 34,000 subscribers. People who said mean things about it on Twitter were mysteriously blocked.

Chief executive John Fellet railed against the media, which he claimed was waging a deliberate campaign against the company in retaliation for a spat over the use of Sky clips in news bulletins.

Now, I like conspiracies as much as the next reptilian shape-shifter, but I promise I'm not writing this column at the behest of my shadowy paymasters. Apart from anything else, trying to compel a bunch of journalists to do anything in unison would be about as successful as herding cats.

SUPPLIED Richard Meadows: Could it be that Sky TV is terrible value for money, with an annoying restrictive business model?

If we take off our tin-foil hats for a moment, we might come up with a simpler explanation. Could it be that Sky TV is terrible value for money, with an annoying restrictive business model? Is it possible that it's hemorrhaging customers because its competitors are literally five times cheaper?

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Blessed as we are with free and cheap alternatives, a Sky subscription increasingly seems like a relic of a bygone age.

Let's start with a round-up of the free options. Freeview offers dozens of channels you can watch live, stream, or record. Both TVNZ and TV3 have on-demand streaming services with plenty of recent content.

Then there's YouTube, which has 300 hours of new video uploaded every minute. Among the inevitable dross, there's tons of amazing material covering every topic you can imagine, some of which has pretty amazing production values. For those out of the loop, this is where kids increasingly go to watch 'TV'.

Next up, the juicy buffet of paid streaming options – Netflix, Quickflix, Lightbox, Sky's own Neon, and others. There are too many to do a proper comparison, but prices start around $12 a month. Compare that to Sky, which starts from $50, and ends up more like double that if you want sport and recording capabilities.

The choice really depends on what mix of programming best tickles your pickle. I like the premium version of Netflix, which lets you stream on four different devices at once, and works out to a grand total of $4.50 a head. It's a bit vague whether you're meant to share your account, but you should be fine in a household or a flat.

These services all have apps so you can play them through various devices and gadgets, but it's not a requirement. All you need at the minimum is a computer, which you can always plug into the big screen with a $2 HDMI cable.

OK, let's address the elephant in the room. If you're a big sports fan, you're probably stuck with Sky. There's no (legal) alternative I know of, especially now they've scrapped the Fanpass you could buy to tune in to a day or week's worth of sporting goodness.

One option is to just go to the pub to watch the big games, which is more or less what I've ended up doing. Obviously that's not going to cut it for a real fan, in which case there's one other trick worth mentioning.

If you call up to cancel your subscription, you might get offered a big discount to stay. Duncan Greive over at the Spinoff managed to knock off almost 50 per cent, without having to extend his contract. If you were thinking of leaving anyway, it's definitely worth a try.

In 2017, dropping a grand a year for TV just feels wrong. Here's one last thing to chew on: If you cut the cord and invested that money instead, it'd be a decision worth $250,000 over a lifetime. Unlimited live sports is pretty awesome – but so is a quarter of a million bucks.

Got a burning money question? Email Budget Buster at richard.meadows@thedeepdish.org, or hit him up on Twitter at @MeadowsRichard. You can also find links to previous Budget Busters here.

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