Well, I am out of suggestions. In a way it sounds like you may be looking for justifications to keep cable and that is a valid position.
The current state of the art and politics will not allow what you want. Cable/sat companies will fight to keep their exclusive content off of IP based carriers. Content providers will fight to the death to protect against even the slightest opening for copying content. Those two are not going to change.
BTW, I was speaking directly about ROKU and the Panasonic BR player. The Panny draws in the microamp range when in its 'off' state. Just enough power to keep the ram alive.
I just have one show that I really want ASAP. Just one. And one other show that I'm fine with being available the next morning. I really would like an alternative, as I'm tired of paying big bucks for those 2 shows. I'm just uncompromising in that I don't want to lose functionality.
Maybe I'll just move ahead with dropping the internet. That almost saves as much money.