I'd rather go to my EPG, go to the channel that a show/movie is on that I'm interested in, advance the guide to the appropriate time slot press the record button, select record entire series with no repeats then screw around typing the name of a show//move with a remote and an on screen keyboard. Don't really care about hard drive space. With a 500 GB and a 1 TB DVR from both DirecTV and TWC that is underutilized, hard drive space is irrelevant. That's 3TB worth of storage. I have Faith Hill's last SNF intro sitting on the DirecTV HR34 and last nights Ultimate Fighter sitting on my TWC Arris 3600. That's it. I watch A LOT of TV. 70+ shows are set to record on my DVRs. I need tuners, and lots of them. I don't need more then 100 or 150 GB of recording space. What I record I watch next day, with almost no exceptions unless I'm out of town. DVRs are not permanent archival media. Also don't 'binge watch' which I find to be an idiotic concept. Can't take watching the same characters in the same situations over and over. About the only time I'll watch two of the same show back to back is when my 30 minute reality shows air that way. Storage Wars, Shipping Wars and Pawn Stars being the main ones.
I've had a PS3 and Xbox 360, I have a PS4 and Xbox One. I have a smart TV, smart blu ray player and internet enabled A/V receiver. I've helped plenty of friends and family set these things up from all of the major manufactures. I find all of these IPTV apps to be much more cumbersome then just pressing a button or three on a cable or satellite box. The user interfaces on these things are also more convoluted then they should be and I'm willing to be these apps themselves (aside from the ones on the gaming consoles) are hardly ever updated. Sunday I cancelled my third free trial of Netflix in the past four years. I almost forgot I had it again, if I didn't get the email reminding me my free trial almost up. It's all old stuff that I've either seen before, have no interest in watching and a bunch of B movies. Last time I had Netflix I used it to watch the first few episodes of King of the Hill that I missed when they originally aired and never caught on Cartoon Network. I think KOTH has since been removed. This time I used it to watch the first four episodes of Shipping Wars, which I never saw. Also watched two and a half episodes of their original series whose name escapes me with Kevin Spacey. I couldn't take it anymore I was so bored with it.
On Memorial Day I watched the pilot episode of Jericho on Netflix only to see a few hours later it was airing on Pop (formerly TVGN Network). Picture quality and audio quality was much better on Pop HD on cable then it was on Netflix. Noticed the same thing years ago during my first free trial, when Netflix had their agreement with Starz. I'd flip back and forth between the same movie on Netflix as it was playing on Starz and there was no question which one was better. The whole live streaming of TV channels also baffles me. The one and only time I ever used any of the 'Watch' or 'Go' apps/websites was last summer during the World Cup. The company I work for is a subsidiary of a large corporation based in Europe and a bunch of the big wigs were in that week, so I let them borrow my laptop, logged into my Watch ESPN account gave them a projector and set it up in an unused conference room so they could watch it on the wall. Besides some NFL Sunday Ticket stuff, that is one of the very few times I've ever streamed anything live that I could just watch on ya know, satellite or cable.
It sounds like our personal experiences couldn't be any more different in this regard.
I actually find myself typing the name of a show or movie more often on my cable TV settop box than on any Netflix app. With Netflix, I either browse my recommendations in-app (which after 12+ years of rating content on Netflix are pretty spot on) or I search shows using a regular keyboard on my laptop. With the cable TV settop box, I'd have to know the air date, time, and channel to quickly find it in an onscreen guide (and even still, that's much more than three button presses to pull up the guide, select the date, scroll to the channel, and then scroll to the time slot and go through the set up recording process). With so many damn TV channels, half the time I don't remember the channel number associated with any given TV network, which are prone to change every few years. I watch at least a half-dozen series on Syfy each year, but even with a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what channel number that was in my cable TV package.
Regarding quality, the 1080p (with Dolby Digital Plus audio) streaming I get from Netflix via PS3/PS4 blows my cable TV's over-compressed 720p/1080i quality out of the water. I can't imagine what Netflix's 4K programming will look like once I make that jump. The quality of my local CW's HD broadcasts are almost unwatchable, with terrible macro-blocking during any kind of fast movement. Unfortunately, I'm too impatient to wait for many of my favorite shows to be added to Netflix streaming so I put up with the poor broadcast quality.
But I have been able to catch up on many great shows I've missed over the years on Netflix, including Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and the Blacklist. Netflix streams the uncensored versions of TV shows, by the way (and yes, there is a difference between what airs on broadcast TV and on Netflix when it comes to M-rated shows).Not to mention, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Marco Polo, and Marvel's Daredevil are as good as anything on broadcast or premium cable right now.
The "Watch" and "Go" apps come in pretty handy since half my local college's games end up on ESPN3 instead of on the regular cable TV ESPN channels. The quality isn't great, but it's better than nothing and the apps are easy to use.
Getting back on topic, I can't help but notice many of Showtime's shows end up on Netflix anyway, so if I'm patient enough (since I don't sub to any premium cable channels), I'll get to see most of their original shows at some point anyway, making their new app something I would never need to bother with.
