And then there’s:
I had Sling a couple of months ago right when they added the AMC network. The Walking Dead crapped out every week. Tech support was unhelpful and clueless It was almost like Sling didn’t realize when they added the AMC network, that people would pile on to watch TWD.
There were also problems with the streaming of other networks, including Sundance and We. (It was NOT my connection, which I used successfully to stream from Amazon while querying a database at work.)
Anyway, I’d check out feedback on Sling on their Facebook page to see if the stream is still a problem.
Sling looks to be a good filler if you want to cut the cable but want those standard channels - especially Disney and CN, if you have kids. But at $20 it’s a bit pricey, and it has only realtime viewing (plus a very small amount of 3-day replay), so it’s just an alternative to studio-controlled broadcasting. That makes it completely different from all other streaming alternatives, which are 100%, unlimited watch-on-demand.
To me, cutting the cable is as much about getting rid of studio/broadcaster/channel-controlled offerings, timing and “control,” and eliminating the pointless expense and limitations of DVRs, as it is about slashing the costs of the service. Sling seems like a big step… sideways at best.
In other news, delivered fresh to my inbox, Hulu is now… just Hulu. No more Plus. Still has free and subscription tiers, but they’re both called Hulu. (At least they didn’t pull a netflix and decide to suddenly call the two services by completely different names… 
)
That’s soooo 2010. This is 2015.
The frequently mentioned SlingTV gives you a pack of cable channels for one monthly fee. HBO and Showtime are starting up cable TV-independent streaming services. By next year, almost every cable TV channel someone will want to watch will be available in various streaming formats.
And it’s not just Roku. I have Amazon FireTV Stick plus a DVR which does streaming. Chromecast is really popular. Etc.
Outside of baseball, we don’t watch anything in real time. And even that’s available for a fee from MLB online.
It may be outdated, but I have grown tired of loading channels onto my Roku that then demand a permission slip from my provider.
Which will be excellent, unless - as in the case of Sling - you can only get prepriced bundles that are already on the road to being “virtual cable” offerings, with all the downsides. When I can pick my channels individually, and pay an appropriate price for each, and have full on-demand access to their programming… I’ll cheer.
I’d guess you don’t live in the blackout region for your favorite team. We’re almost 100 miles from Boston and can’t get BoSox games; that and not being able to sit up all night to watch Giants games made MLB.tv pretty useless. It’s going to be a while before streaming offerings get anywhere close to what we came to expect from cable, mostly because of the massive amounts of money and layers upon layers of binding contracts involved.
Don’t get me wrong, streaming is the future and better in every way from single-provider entertainment. But it’s still fledgling in many ways, still well under “cable’s” thumb and already showing signs of simply carrying all of cable/sat’s faults into a different delivery model.
You are a perfect candidate for “cutting the cord.” As to why everyone wouldn’t do it – more and more people ARE doing it. However, sports is a problem point for many people. You don’t have that interest, so its perfect.
What isn’t being made clear in the posts above is that with services like Netflix and Amazon Prime – content isn’t served as a “channel” – there are shows that are available. So for example, you may not get a specific “BBC” channel but there is an asston of shows that started out on the BBC. You may not get “AMC” but you can watch six and a half seasons of “Mad Men”. For the most part, with streaming services you stop thinking about channels and start thinking about individual shows you want to watch. (I think Hulu might work a bit differently but I don’t use that).