Long story short, the cable TV industry and Cord Cutting services often participate in something called TV Everywhere.
It's a way for you to watch your TV package on a phone or whatever. It also facilitates using network apps like Discovery Go by whacking up the app with the login credentials for your TV provider.
We have a a piece of software running called Channels DVR for our tv antennas, it will also connect to TV Everywhere providers, like DirecTV, XFinity, Hulu Live TV, etc.
Or the cable provider my parents have! We now have access to their TV provider for the $80 a year subscription fee for the Channels guide data.
There might be other free'er software that would let you do this, I haven't looked into .
So yeah, "free" cable.