How can I watch The Walking Dead online?

October 13, 2012 9:37 AM

Dish Network has unfriended A&E, so how's a guy supposed to watch season three of The Walking Dead? Do I have any options to watch episodes online? I know I can either (a) get rid of Dish, or (b) wait a year for the season to show up on Netflix, but are there any choices out here? I am willing to pay for the content, if necessary. Thanks!
posted by jackypaper to media & arts (11 answers total)

It's $43 bucks for the season in HD on iTunes.
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:42 AM on October 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Amazon
posted by pyro979 at 9:44 AM on October 13, 2012 [3 favorites]

At one point, Dish was talking about instituting a program that would reimburse viewers of Breaking Bad for the episodes that they purchased online from Amazon. I don't know if they did it or not, but it's maybe worth a call to Dish to see if something like that is in place for the Walking Dead?
posted by .kobayashi. at 9:51 AM on October 13, 2012

iTunes link
posted by Nothlit at 10:27 AM on October 13, 2012

Edit: AMC rather than A&E.

Thanks for these suggestions. Looks like it's Amazon for me.
posted by jackypaper at 10:30 AM on October 13, 2012

Are you guys seeing something I'm not? The only thing I'm seeing on Amazon for season 3 is a brief EPK piece about the make-up in the series. As far as I know, AMC has held back internet offerings for the current season because of the DISH dispute, to encourage subscribers to leave DISH.
posted by incessant at 12:45 PM on October 13, 2012

That's because Season 3 hasn't aired yet.
posted by Justinian at 12:47 PM on October 13, 2012

There was an article on Consumerist where a called up Dish about the Walking Dead and they sent him a roku and gave him a bill credit for enough to buy it on amazon. This is similar to what they were doing for people who wanted Breaking Bad.

So call Dish up first, you may get it for free.
posted by magnetsphere at 3:32 PM on October 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

I got suckered into a contract with DishTV a while ago, which actually seems to have turned out to be a decent deal (all I've watched on it was Game of Thrones, the Tour de France, Walking Dead, and the odd Mad Men episode), and after reading this earlier today I called 'em up and said I wanted to cancel. Here's what I got:
- movie channels for free (HBO/Cinemax/Starz/etc., which I don't watch anyway), in the form of a discount every month for 6 months
- a Roku 2 XD box
- an HDMI cable
- no contract extension.

I was advised to call again with my experience using the Roku box, and to see if there were any other discounts/credits that could be applied. The representative I spoke with said that they wanted to pay for the Roku box itself, as well as any cost of streaming missing content (in this case, Walking Dead via Amazon's whateverwhatever video service).

He stated that whatever the case, the Roku box is mine to keep, even if I cancel DishTV services (my contract expires very soon). The HDMI cable is mine to keep, too (BONUS!). The only downside, he explained, was that I wouldn't be able to watch Walking Dead live-- he believed that the episodes would appear on Amazon on Mondays.

It was a very easy phone call to make. I basically chose the option to cancel services, got connected to a rep in under a minute, said I wanted to cancel because I wanted to switch to DirectTV as Dish no longer carried AMC/Walking Dead/Mad Men. From there it quickly and smoothly transitioned to a conversation about if I would be interested in staying with Dish, with the offer above. He stated up front that the Roku box did not come with an HDMI cable, but followed that up with an offer to send one out to me for free. When I asked about how quickly episodes would show up on Amazon, he explained what I wrote above, and said that if this was a concern, he might be able to add an additional credit monthly for the inconvenience.

Anyway, here's the number I called. The Roku 2 XD will play up to 1080i, and it looks like eps from Amazon will stream at 720p with 5.1 surround via HDMI cable, so long as your receiver supports it. Reading around, the video quality seems to be on par with HD cable/satellite broadcasts.
posted by herrdoktor at 12:49 AM on October 14, 2012

Probably no subtitles on the streaming options, right?
posted by Beholder at 6:02 AM on October 14, 2012

Last night's episode is streaming.
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:08 PM on October 15, 2012