I'm in the same boat as you. I cut the cord about 5 months ago and haven't looked back. I have Netflix and Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV. I know I am missing out on a lot of great content and it pisses me off...until I get my bill, which is a fraction of what I was paying before. Also, the convenience of my current setup is unmatchable.
The thing is, like you said, the technology has changed. I want shows on my current setup. I am willing to pay more for more content. One thing I thought was very interesting is Apple removing TV show rentals. I never purchase movies or TV shows. I like to rent them, watch them once and I usually don't want to watch them again. If I do, I will rent it again.
Why can't content providers understand this? Netflix and Hulu need to start creating their own content, which I know they are both working towards.
One semi-related note: AMC is ending Breaking Bad next season because of Madmen sucking up the budget - Netflix and Hulu: go buy that show! I would gladly pay for a show-specific season pass just to watch Breaking Bad.
> AMC is ending Breaking Bad next season because of Madmen sucking up the budget
Thankfully, that's not going to happen. AMC tried cutting BrBa back to only 6 episodes next season. But Sony owns the rights to the show, so they shopped it around. AMC caved. For all the press Mad Men gets, Breaking Bad has ~2x the viewers per episode, and Walking Dead (which had it's budget cut due to Mad Men's cost) gets about ~2.5x the viewers.
[Edit: Removed my snarky comment about AMC's management.]
To AMC's credit, the CPM AMC receives for Mad Men is much higher: $34 instead of $12-$25. It could be because people pay attention to the commercials, since the show is about advertising. A cynic would say it's a prestige thing for media buyers to get their ads run on Mad Men.
While I agree with the original poster, i.e., those who are already using netflix are unlikely to go back, netflix is supposed to be a growth business (P/E of > 60), ergo, if this leads to less growth, that will be terrible terrible terrible for the company.
They aired Walking Dead season 1 in the UK earlier this year, awesome stuff. It was the first time I turned my TV on for about 3 months & worth every minute :)
MatthewPhillips - To answer your question I purchased an Apple TV (the original one) a while ago so I could rent movies from iTunes and play them on my TV. I also liked streaming my music to my surround sound system on my TV. I never used the Apple TV to store content though, as it was originally purposed to do.
I actually just purchased a Roku the other day and connected it to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Prior to that I was using my Xbox for these services (not Amazon). Roku is pretty cool but very buggy and slow to load. I am not as impressed as I thought I would be.
I use it for the content; the other boxes don't offer as much variety. I think the PS3 probably comes the closest though. I wish they would offer a cheaper streaming only device.
I bought a Roku about two years ago; it's been a wonderful little device; have had very few problems, and most of those were down to the content providers and not the box itself.
I recommend checking out Amazon's instant videos that are not included with Prime. They have something on sale every day. It is usually a rental for $0.99 during the week and a few different rentals for $1.99 over the weekend. Just look at the top left corner on the instant video page for the deal of the day.
I have both. The UI on the Apple TV is better (but not leaps and bounds better), and the Netflix quality seems to be just a little better in HD. Both are connected to HDMI.
Of course, the Roku also does Hulu and Pandora, and I have a second one upstairs on the non-SD tv. From what I've gathered the Apple TV 2 doesn't play nice on SD.
We have Roku 2 and Apple TV, the UI on Apple TV is better, esp. Netflix. Roku 2 is 1080p, Apple TV is 720p, but our LCDTV does such a good job upsampling 720p you can't really tell.
Roku 2 has access to a lot more content, but the experience of surfing channels is kind of fragmented. The included Angry Birds game and motion remote rock tho!
YouTube is available on Roku, and works excellently.
I have all the users that upload old Formula 1, so I can watch old races whenever I want.
Democracy Now also has it's own Roku channel, as do many many other things like Ted that you might not have thought of. It's worth spending some time on Google searching this stuff out.
I'd say I spend more time watching YouTube, NetFlix and HULU+ on the Roku than any other consumption mechanism.
Local news on OTA HD follows behind.
One slightly sad note, I only have the base Roku, and it's quite slow (maybe buffering), so my 2 year old is now utterly tolerant of loading bars, and will watch the loading bar, since she knows that content will follow. Her absolutely favorite thing on TV, though she doesn't watch much (seriously), is the mime segment on Nihongo Quick Lesson, NHK's little Japanese-lessons show that runs about 2:15pm, right after her lunch. I guess really, it's not much different to me as a kid waiting for the TV to warm up and show a picture...
As a side note to this, the Apple TV works very, very well for streaming from your iTunes movie library. I'm in the slow-ish process of converting my entire DVD library over to video files that iTunes likes for this purpose.
I have thought about doing this many times but my family is bilingual. If I want the movie in original (usually English) and German am I going to have to rip the movie twice? That would be a deal breaker then.
You can have multiple soundtracks in the iTunes mp4 container. Just use the "Apple TV2" profile of Handbrake. The interface to select the right audio track on the Apple TV is a bit difficult to find (see Google for details).
The thing is, like you said, the technology has changed. I want shows on my current setup. I am willing to pay more for more content. One thing I thought was very interesting is Apple removing TV show rentals. I never purchase movies or TV shows. I like to rent them, watch them once and I usually don't want to watch them again. If I do, I will rent it again.
Why can't content providers understand this? Netflix and Hulu need to start creating their own content, which I know they are both working towards.
One semi-related note: AMC is ending Breaking Bad next season because of Madmen sucking up the budget - Netflix and Hulu: go buy that show! I would gladly pay for a show-specific season pass just to watch Breaking Bad.