Best news and entertainment apps for Windows Phone 8

The weather channel gives you hyper local weather forecasts for your area. Live tiles show auto updates and forecasts and click in for more detailed forecasts.

Watch videos from the weather channel and get severe weather alerts pushed to you.

This app needs to be installed on a Nokia Lumia phone.

Cost: Free

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I discovered this app with over 150 Tom and Jerry episodes when sitting next to a guy on the train. All episodes are in MP4 format, playable in full screen and the ability to save images to your phone.

There is a one tap play feature and a shuffle feature for the episodes.

Cost: Free

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This TV app has over 500 TV channels  from around the world, from countries like Vietnam, USA, UK, China, Korea, Thailand, Italy, Brazil, India, German, Greece and Spain. There are also movie and sports channels.

Best viewing is when the device is connected to Wi-Fi or high speed 3G.

Cost: Free

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IMDb is a must for those "What was the last film he made?" sort of questions. It has over 1.5 million movies, TV titles, and has information about celebrities, local show times, US TV listings and has photo galleries to browse.

The site aims to have every detail about every movie and TV show ever made, including who was in it, who made it, the plot, user ratings, trailers, photos, reviews, quotes, bloopers and trivia such as celebrity birthdays.

Cost: Free

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Over 30 newspapers and news sites listed to read including: CNN, Yahoo, USA Today, Huffington Post, Google News, NBC, BBC, Fox News, New York Times and the Guardian. You can save links to access later and save the last newspaper you read.

Cost: Free

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This Netflix app lets you watch TV episodes and films on your phone.  If you have Netflix membership you can watch unlimited TV programs within your subscription - or take a one month free trial.

Start watching on one device, and resume watching on another.

Cost: Free

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The weather satellite app provides the most up to date weather images for clouds and wind taken from orbiting satellites. Displays show the high and low temperatures in the US, water, and hurricanes.   

Global views of the continents with zoom feature.

Cost: Free

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If you like to entertain yourself, then Pianophone is a great mini-piano for your Windows Phone. This works well with multi-touch.  I can't play piano well but this gives me lots of amusement to while away the time. It is reallly fun watching folks scrabble for their own phones when you play one of the ringtones.

Cost: Free

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