Lots of good discussion.
Sling TV only works with Roku mostly for TV streaming at the moment along with iOS, Android, PC's, and Macs, but you're restricted to your computer or phone unless you can hook that up to your TV. Amazon Fire TV and Fire Stick will be added soon. I plan on getting Sling TV once Amazon Fire TV is supported since I already have that.
MLB does block all local games. They are getting closer to working a deal with Fox (which would cover FSN, but not networks like Root Sports) in order to allow people to stream their local market games, but only if they already have a cable subscription. So that doesn't help cord-cutters at all. They won't let cord-cutters stream local market games because the cable networks, like FSN, pay HUGE money to be able to broadcast their games and get them bundled with cable/satellite packages. Maybe someday they will offer their own streaming service. If ESPN ever offers a standalone streaming service, then I'm guessing Fox Sports won't be too far behind.
I agree with what others said about live sports being the sticking point to not cutting cable. I'm a huge baseball fan and would regularly watch probably 150+ games each season. So cutting cable was a huge deal when we did it a year ago since I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. Last season was the first season that I couldn't watch games on TV. I'll admit that I did miss it. However, what I did was sign up for the MLB At Bat for $3 per month and we would stream the radio broadcasts of all the games to some wireless speakers in the house. Instead of watching the game, we would read books or something while listening to the games in the background. It wasn't as good as watching on TV, but it still worked pretty well. The toughest part was not being able to watch the playoff games. MLB.tv did allow a "playoff packages" for like $10 or something, but that only allowed you to stream the ballpark feeds (static cameras, i.e. no director picking different camera angles depending on the action), not the broadcast feed.
Has anyone done the proxies for streaming MLB games? I thought about that, but I thought it doesn't work very well for streaming video because to do a proxy you're basically sending your internet signal/connection through servers in other countries. So your signal has to travel a LONG ways, which decreases your speed.
To get OTA channels, we got a Leaf antenna for like $30 or something (
http://www.gomohu.com/). It works 95% of the time I would say. It depends on how close you are to the broadcast antenna. Living near a larger metro area helps a lot. You can certainly get better antennas, but for the price and ease of installation (just hang on the wall with thumbtacks) the thing works surprisingly well. We get 20-some channels, but all I really care about are Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, and maybe PBS. The nice thing is it's all clean digital HD with 5.1 surround sound and it's not compressed as much as cable compresses their signal.
We have Comcast for our internet. 30Mbps connection costs $65 per month here. We bought our own modem (as everyone should do), so we don't have a rental fee.
I'm really jealous of this deal that Verizon Fios is offering:
http://www.verizon.com/home/MLP/Onli...053557&afsrc=1
50Mbps internet, plus HBO and Showtime, plus local TV channels for $60 per month. In December it was even better because they were offering a year of Netflix in that bundle for the same price I believe. If Fios was available here, I would have signed up.