I was more concerned with not having a DVR. TiVo is another scam (you "buy" the unit and then they charge you a monthly subscription on top of that), so I didn't want to go that route. It looks like Mythbuntu does the same thing for free.
We've got 4 Roku boxes in the house. There's a Netflix channel on those (as well as Hulu Plus and Amazon VOD), or I can just run it on the PC and stream the video to the TV. We also have a Windows server set up with our entire movie library on it. All the Roku boxes will play those, too.
There's a ton of options out there for low cost entertainment. After doing some research, I honestly don't know why we've been throwing money away all this time. When we first moved to this town 15 years ago, we were paying a TOTAL of $60/mo for cable (including premium channels) and internet. They suckered us in and just kept gradually jacking the price up a little at a time so we wouldn't notice.
To heck with 'em.