We just got our Roku and will cancel sat TV at the end of the month. We have a $15/month Netflix account....2 videos at a time plus unlimited streaming.
From what we have seen, the movies and TV series episodes play perfectly, no different from a DVD. The US *news* channels, though are really video podcasts or the same clips available on You Tube and they have buffering problems that are annoying. There are several foreign *news* channels, Middle Eastern, French, BBC. Those are free. There is subscription HuluPlus, for an additional $15/more thru the Roku Channel Store. No news, but they appear to stream important news events, live. From their site, it looks as through they do have ads. We have DSL and a wireless router.
We are rural and in hill country. We went totally without TV for 15 years, until we got our first large satellite dish in 1990 or 1991. That was great: clear reception, unscrambled feeds, news pool footage. Then came scrambling and commercials. We then got subscription satellite. By now it is full of infomercials and the weird conglomeration of channels all owned by the same network and filled with various recycled footage made into *new* documentaries.
Roku is new and I think they will find ways to add American news in English. We stopped watching the alphabet channels in 2004, so we have 7 years of network series to catch up on. Netflix is supposedly beginning to create original material. News we get online and the You Tube clips have less buffering problem than the same clips through the Roku.
What I like besides no commercials, which takes an episode from 1 hr down to 40 minutes, is that I can watch on my schedule.
Forgot to explain that the reason we have videos and streaming from Netflix is that we can use the videos in the shop. We may not keep that part of the subscription, but are trying it for now. Radio works well when we are working, but sometimes nothing much is available except music and NPR.