I have not had that problem. But, you do have to specifically wait for the actual air time to come and go before you're able to play it with fast-forward capability.
Once that's done, I've never had an issue with fast-forward. The UI does differentiate between "recorded" and "on-demand" content.
What I have run into:
- Something I recorded is no longer available, I assume because some contract expired.
- Something that's immediately available as on-demand isn't scheduled to air "Live". I can still click the thing that says to record it, but it never airs and so never records. That's pretty rare, but it's happened.
There is still a set of people that like their local news a lot. Or don't want to figure out the piecemeal way to get access to their cooking show, some current ABC/NBC/CBS show, BBC America, old episodes of Forensic Files, etc, from X different places. Though I agree, I do see it dying out.
You can get some of what's offered on YouTube TV without commercials in other places, but it's a piecemeal adventure. If you shut down YouTube TV in favor of Amazon Prime, for example, you could pay for a subscription to AMC+ on Prime and watch "The Walking Dead", "Discovery of Witches", etc, without commercials. Or, older stuff, like "Law and Order" that has commercials on YouTube TV, but comes with Prime, no commercials.
"Roku's standard terms for partner channels include 20% of subscription fees and 30% of ad inventory, which has driven away Peacock, as it is currently airing fewer than five minutes of ads per hour. Meanwhile, WarnerMedia has been looking to retire the HBO service now sold through Roku to promote HBO Max, which Roku has turned down singularly."
To me it just reads like Roku has grown it's subscriber base to the point where they can negotiate with content providers in the same way that cable companies used to. Which isn't great for end users, but it is what it is. Both HBOMax and Peacock ended up on Roku, so some deal was reached in both cases.
It does, because it's essentially the same thing as old school cable TV. You're getting access to ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, Fox, FX, CNN, TNT, EPSN, BBC America, Food Network, HGTV, and so on. There's not really any service that offers (all of) that content without commercials.
You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials. Which is similar to what you would get with a old school cable and a real DVR.
I also hate commercials, and while you can find commercial free versions of some of the YouTube TV content, you can't find it for everything they air.
Streaming is so fragmented now, both in content and features, that you have to do quite a lot of research before buying.
The seven years worth of "omg, thanks!" comments is pretty cool. Too bad the "small internet" is dying. Had it been a facebook comment or old tweet, it likely would have melted into obscurity.