[Jeffhs]

Update: Roku does in fact stream local TV in my area, through the use of what they call the TWC TV app, so I can now watch all the Cleveland stations plus cable through my Roku player. TWC has also very recently changed their requirements such that folks with only Starter TV (local channels only) can use a Roku to get local TV, whereas until this change went into effect, the local channels were only available to subscribers via Roku with Standard TV service or higher. This makes me very happy since I now have the option to eventually (if my cable bill goes too high) downgrade to Starter TV, without losing the local TV channels. These, and their subchannels (MeTV, Antenna TV, COZI, the PBS subchannels, etc.), are more important to me than most of the cable stations, so if worse comes to worst I can downgrade to Starter TV (what I call bare bones basic) without missing anything. I still have the cable connected to my VCR, for use when the Roku streams freeze or outright go black (these outages do occur from time to time, but thankfully not very often).

All in all, I am now very satisfied with the Roku box and the TWC app, and happier yet that the latter will work with Starter TV, which is Time Warner's lowest level of cable service.

I know I all but swore up and down in another post that I did not want a cable box on my TV under any circumstances, but that was before I realized how much better television is with the Roku player. I don't use a lot of the channels (aside from the TWC TV app) on the home screen, but I do occasionally watch Crackle, a channel devoted to old TV series from the '40s through the seventies (I say the forties since Crackle runs a lot of the old black and white Three Stooges episodes, many of which date back to that decade and even the late '30s).

I sometimes wonder if the Roku player and other video-over-IP players will eventually sound a death knell for cable TV. As it is now, to get local TV with the Roku player, one must at least have Starter TV on his or her cable account (the cable does not have to be physically connected to the television); however, I wonder if, eventually, this requirement will be dropped entirely. I recently read in the TV Technology newsletter (which I receive in my email daily) that video over IP is the future of television, so it may not be long before broadcast TV as we know it today will be a relic of a bygone era. The day may and probably will come when every TV in America will have either a cable box or a Roku player connected to it; given the popularity of Roku and other streaming video players (Google TV, et al.), that day may not be too far off. Most of what used to be the VHF and UHF television spectrum in the US, after all, has been auctioned off to other services such as cellular, et al., and the remaining TV broadcast spectrum presently used by DTV stations may well be next.

The only concern I have regarding the eventual change from OTA to wired cable TV is that the latter will mean the end of truly portable TV, at least as it used to be when all TV was over the air. It may well work out this way, but since most TV stations and networks, including cable, now stream their programs over the Internet, the new age of portable TV will almost certainly be (and in fact already is) watching television on a tablet, laptop or smartphone. I already have a shortcut on my tablet's home screen to the NBC Nightly News stream, and use it when I, for whatever reason, cannot see the news at its usual broadcast time (6:30 p.m. Eastern), and I realize I can watch many other network and cable programs on my tablet or even my desktop computer as well.

The cable companies are justifiably concerned over so-called "cord cutting", but this is something that will gain rather than lose popularity as time goes on. This also shows how much television has evolved since the experimental broadcasts by RCA and NBC in the late 1930s. If the pioneers of TV were alive today to see the sweeping changes that have occurred in the medium since then, I am sure they would be amazed, if not outright floored and/or flabbergasted.