What are we doing then?

My buddies still watch TV, they just download it.

If media companies were smart, they'd offer commercial free downloads of your favorite shows for something like $1-$2 each (or $25 for season pass). Granted, those downloads would have to be DRM-less of lightly DRMed, in high def or DVD quality, and able to be played on various devices (encoded in mp4/H.264/xvid).