Good questions, renegade,
I'll begin by saying I love the internet and streaming, my home is optimized for it in lots of ways, but when push comes to shove, we both prefer cable TV over internet streaming of same material, and for quite a few reasons..
Yes, Roku does have live sports, but not like the TV networks do. I got up early this fall to watch a free NFL game on Roku coming from England. Was not impressed. My Roku is wired to a gigabit home network, I pay extra for premium internet bandwidth (over 100mbps) and I get great signal on Roku. Nevertheless, the picture was not the quality of Comcast TV, and worse yet, the internet stream kept stopping and stalling too often. This does not happen with cable TV. The Super Bowl was free on Roku stream this year, too. A few minutes with it on Roku, and we decided to watch game on cable TV.
Local sports: My wife is a big baseball fan. We have the pathetic Seattle Mariners on TV most every game; and most all games are broadcast here. If we had MLB stream, we would not see local games, because the MLB blacks out all streaming of local games, in all markets. to force fans to watch on local TV and put up with all the commercials. We can only watch Mariners on MLB if it is an Away game. Then, we can easily compare streaming via Roku with cable broadcast. Again, no contest regarding quality of picture. Over the past years, the picture quality of the stream has improved, but there is a noticeable jerkiness to the picture that tells us "this is not cable TV quality". We have had MLB stream from time to time, mostly near end of season when the price drops and we get emailed about a "deal". Since my wife is a long time Yankee fan, she gets the MLB stream for that team alone.
I am sure we would face the same situation if we had NFL internet stream, and our beloved Seahawks would be blacked out during local games, too! Anyway, enough about live sports.
Other TV programs. We really only have a few we tap into and we always record them on DVR, and most always watch show after recorded so we can skip commercials. If we watch live, we wait long enough to start watching so we can be for enough behind to skip most commercials, but if we don't, there is always the mute button toward the end of the show if we need to "go live". Try using a mute button with an internet stream.
COSTS: So, what is a confirmed cable user to do about the "high prices"?
1. Only buy what you want, so we buy Premium digital for all the ball games and other channels we like, but no premium channels like HBO, etc.
2. I negotiate with Comcast to get the cost down, and it works! Plus, they throw in free stuff, like HBO at no cost!
I got fed up with the bill a few years ago and called Comcast, and told them they cut all these deals for people who switch all the time, so I wanted to know what they will do for long-time Comcast customers. I was switched to another department where the person fell all over herself cutting a deal for me. I got switched to the Customer Retention Dept. They are the people you immediately connect with if you ever press the phone button choice: "I want to discontinue my Comcast service!" One ring and you are in there!
OK, when we were finished making the deal. I ended up with a reduced rate on our DVR, second cable box and given free HBO and their version of Amazon Prime free movie streaming. Total cost now is $40 LESS a month for a year. She said I would have to call back in a year to renegotiate. Yep, a pain, but she told me to just hit 3 button and I would be back in her department again. The next year I did, and this time I agreed to a 2-year contract to reduce the hassle of every year negotiating. This time we got another freebee, and price was reduced $40/mo for all services again. In fact, I think my two years is about up, and I better go through this again this week; wife says our bill has not yet jumped back up yet.
There are programs we like that are only on the internet, e.g. from Livestream, and Roku has an app for that.
So, I like internet streaming of stuff I cannot get otherwise. I like the quality, wide choice and convenience of cable TV and programs. I find paying a monthly bill for excellent video service easier than buying piecemeal, shows on internet streaming to be a waste of my time, and maybe even money. I wonder as this cable-cutting gets more popular how many people will buy streaming shows individually and maybe not cancel some they have, so that in the end they pay as much more than cable will cost. In some ways it can be a false economy kind of a practice.
Now, aren't you sorry you asked me this question after my long-winded answer? Hope somebody got something out of this.
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