I know some of this was covered in a previous thread, but here goes.

I currently have DirecTV and my contract is up 2-2-2011. they kinda pissed me off with a misrepresentation which I aint gonna spend time explaining, so I was seriously thinking about switching back to Dishnetwork then anyway. I have been doing some reading up and have now reconsidered. I am currently paying around $80 a month for a crapload of crap that I don't watch. We primarily watch a lot of TV Land, TruTV, TBS, and mostly old reruns of classic sitcoms such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, everybody loves Raymond and whatever. I don't hardly ever watch movies, but when I am at work my wife does like to watch the chickflicks on LMN and such as that. If I switch back to dishnetwork it will prolly cost at least $60 or $70 for the same crappy crap I have now.

I am thinking seriously of buying two Roku XD/S, one for the LR and one for the BR. and I can then pay $8.00 a month for Netflix and $8.00 a month for Hulu and have more than enough crap to watch, plus I still have an antenna and can watch about 30 local channels for news and all the regular crap.

With the wife not having been employed for a year and a half, I figured this would be a good way to save at least $50.00 a month and still have plenty of crappy crap to watch. Even figuring the $200.00 the equipment will cost and the $16 a month even if we only do it for 6 months it will still save me almost $400.00

what say you?
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With all the movie & tv access Netflix gives you plus hulu having a ton of the new shows I would go that way. When I was without tv/cable all I did was watch Netflix. I had the 4 at a time plan and was getting a new disc almost every day.
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I a gonna go with the streming only cause we would never order dvds in the mail anyhow.:-) Seriously we don't watch many movies at all and I am sure there are enough just from the streaming to last us 400 years.
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The selection for streaming/online only has a lot to be desired. Think of this selection as a pennies on the dollar type of thing. There's *some* decent stuff to watch streaming, but not much IMO in the way of movies.
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IMO, with netflix alone there are a ton of movies added everyday. There is also the starz package which people on cable pay for. Not to mention netflix just signed 2 contracts with movie to tv companies and will rolling that out this year, so that means the movies that tbs, cbs, etc used to get will go to netflix first.

Add to it that you don't have to pay for hulu unless you want older shows. I believe right now you can still watch the last 3 episodes. If you want to go further back than that, netflix is getting more and more tv series full seasons each day.

I went from the best package you could have on directv, to streaming everything. I haven't looked back. I save over $50 a month (which to me is a LOT of money) and I still get good programming. I would recommend though instead of getting a device that acts like a computer, go ahead and purchase a decent media PC, or heck build one for around $300. That way you can also add into the mix stations websites, (tvland and others have exclusive vids on their sites) youtube, photobucket, etc. And in FL you can watch the NHC on your TV when the hurricanes come. I do want to mention though that I don't have HD or Bluray. If you have either of those and have grown accustom to that level of viewing, it might be more of a downgrade than you would like as not everything is in HD yet.
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I'm in the process of doing the same thing. I've got one Roku box in the living room and will get another for the bedroom and drop my cable.

I've got the one-dvd-at-a-time Netflix plan in addition to the streaming (BluRay disc, actually) because I like to get the newer movies on occasion, and it's fun to test out the home theater with a BluRay disc.

I still haven't canceled my cable TV service yet because my girlfriend is in the process of moving in, but once we get everything settled I'll be canceling the cable and just having netflix, OTA tv and possibly hulu (although I haven't subscribed to that yet).
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about 6 months ago I told COMCAST to screw off and signed up for DirectTV...that alone got me more channels and saved me 60$ a month...had I not been so clouded with anger at the time and did some more research, I likely would have just went netflix/hulu as well...but now am stuck in the 2 year DirectTV contract...that or pay the 425$ fine...sooo I'm stuck for a bit....what you're thinking of sounds great to me though.
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Man I'm gonna have to look into this! Dishnetwork sucks and I agree with Greg on the fact you pay for a bunch of crappy channels that you don't watch. Seriously who needs 15 home shopping networks. maybe if they got rid of these we might solve some of our debt crisis.
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Sounds like a plan, brother! I know that high speed internet is much more worthwhile than satellite or cable TV. I'm tempted myself, except mama watches Food Network almost 24/7. But since I got my ROKU, I'm almost exclusively using it with Netflix and Pandora and rarely switch to "regular" tv anymore. However, come baseball season I will be watching Fox Cinci for the Reds- who are blacked out on MLB.com, so that would be my only way of watching them. So, for now, I'll keep the Directv- but in your case what you plan to do makes sense!
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Just a FYI, food network has a lot of videos on their site for viewing. Also you can youtube a lot of the shows.
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I say do it you can't go wrong with the Roku unit plus there are other free channels that you might be interested in as well you just have to do you some searching once they are hooked up.
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I installed a couple private channels for my Roku at http://www.thenowhereman.com/roku/ too.

One has HGTV shows and clips and there are some Food Network ones, too. I think they were with the PodTV Channel.
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I also wanted to add 2 important things.

1. You really need cable internet connection and speeds to handle streaming properly. Netflix less so, but I would highly recommend a direct connection no wireless for streaming.

2. I use this remote: http://www.ezcommander.com/ It essentially turns my old PC into a functional media center. My 4 year old uses it with no problems.
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I have an apple tv module I bought for $100 and I stream my netflix and Itunes movies directly to the tv wireless with no problems.
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Thanks for the replies, and I basically have decided to do just what I stated. the movies aren't that big a deal to me as we watch lots more older TV shows anyway.:-)
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Netflix rocks!! :-)
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Get ya some rabbit ears Greg.
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That won't work out here in the boonies. I do have an antenna though so I can pick up all the standard stuff. We have about 25 or 30 OTA channels since we went digital.
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:-)
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