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You won't regret the Roku purchase. I bought one only because others were raving about it and my wife (who watches a lot more TV than I do) was complaining about how there is very little on the basic cable worth watching. I outright refuse to subscribe to the premium cable packages like HBO and Showtime because they are so expensive in relation to Netflix and also offer much less content (compared to Netflix).

So first we tried a DVR so we could record the few movies and shows off the basic cable but it was always a hassle finding them on the schedule to record and then fast-forwarding through all the commercials once we had them recorded. Also, the DVR would constantly re-record shows we had already seen and erased previously.

So I decided to give the Roku box a try. I was literally up and running in 15 minutes. Another 20 minutes to link my Netflix and Pandora accounts as well as adding about a half dozen "free" channels from the hundred or so available and it was like my cable box didn't exist anymore.

So I don't think you will have any regrets. My only regret wasn't spending the extra $20 to get the Roku model with the extra features you described. But still, I'm a very satisfied customer with the model I got.

One thing I like about the streaming Netflix is that when you add a TV series to your queue, it keeps track of where you left off at so you never have to guess which episode you were on when you go back to that particular show.

One downside is that the choice of movies you can stream is somewhat limited so you do need to keep the DVD option on your Netflix account. However, there are still thousands of movies available for streaming and there is a lot of buried treasure in those offerings. Right now I've got about 40 movies in my instant streaming queue and I'm adding to it all the time.