Every now and then our cable will go out and it can take 45 minutes to re-boot. It doesn't bother me much but my wife lives on network TV. I plan on hooking up a digital antenna so when this happens, I can just flip the feed and she can go on her merry way watching The Voice, The Bachelorette, etc.
This is also my daughter's plan for her smart TV in her basement. She doesn't want to pay for an extra cable box for a tv that isn't used all that often so she will just stream what she needs and add a digital antenna for the over-the-air stuff when they need to.