Wow.. this could be big... I just got online and our favorite local affiliate which we can't get OTA is listed so this may be a great possibility!
We have Dish right now with 4 TVs connected to a central DVR and we like it that any TV in the house can view live programming. We also like being able to skip or fast forward through commercials on recorded shows.
1 From what I am reading on their website it seems that the DVR is in the cloud...
2 I assume that if I have my 4 tvs connected via a Firestick or Roku that any one (or all four) could watch live tv or recorded shows... correct?
3 And fast forward through commercials?
1) Subscribers do have a cloud DVR for no extra charge. You designate "My Shows," and every time an episode comes on, it's automatically DVR'd for you. DVR'd episodes are there for 28 days, then they disappear. Seems like plenty of time to me. If you miss your DVR copy, there are also on-demand episodes of most shows, but those libraries are variable, some are complete, others are spotty (e.g. Big Bang Theory only has 4 episodes of the current season).
2) Up to 3 devices via PS3, PS4, Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV - though how they look on the various devices is NOT exactly the same. I tried iPad/iOS, Chromecast & Roku myself, and I've seen Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and PS3/4 online, let me know if you have one in mind
3) You can fast forward, but on most streaming devices it's kinda hit and miss. My satellite setup had a remote button to advance 30 secs and rewind 10 sec, so it was very easy to skip commercials. With PS Vue, you hit fast forward and kinda guess when to resume play again. You don't see the program advancing in the background, and the onscreen timer only shows minutes (not seconds) so it's 'iterative.' A minor shortcoming IMO.
However, you can pause the DVR, on demand, or most if not all live shows. We were able to pause anything we tried, but I read that you can't with all shows.
And there's a catchup feature on most but not all networks. For example, there was a show yesterday called Epic Yachts that I discovered in the guide 58 minutes into the episode. At the top of the hour, I noticed that previous episode had a CatchUp designation on the guide. I scrolled back to it, hit play, and voila - I got to see a show I'd just missed without recording it. I've never had cable or satellite that would do that. Turns out in addition to automatically DVR'ing all "yours shows" - it keeps most/all episodes on many networks for up to 24 hours? My catchup episodes went back to midnight, so I am
guessing it keeps things from midnight to midnight, erasing the previous day each midnight.
And even though our ISP is only 10 mbps, there was almost no stuttering/delay over the past 5 days, even when streaming to 2 devices at once. And the few times when streaming did pause for "loading" it was only 5-10 seconds.
You probably gathered but shows can have the status LIVE, DVR, ON DEMAND and/or CATCHUP.
Good luck. I'm pretty sure we'll switch to PS Vue in 6 months if not before. We loved it, the only true cable replacement we've seen in our area, no OTA required for live programming!