Set-top boxes continue to beef up their live sports coverage with the addition of pay-per-view Ultimate Fighting Championship matches on Roku boxes.
Roku announced that it will carry all pay-per-view UFC fights going forward. The coverage will debut on May 29 with UFC 114 -- Quinton “Rampage” Jackson against “Suga” Rashad Evans -- live from Las Vegas.
Each match will cost $45, the same as cable. Roku box owners can also subscribe to UFC's channel, which includes archived fights and special features, for $60 per half year, or watch old fights for $2 each. The Roku box itself costs $80 for the standard definition model, $100 for HD and $130 for an extended-range 802.11 b/g/n wireless model.
Roku already offers live streaming baseball for subscribers to MLB.tv, and an NBA channel with highlights and game summaries, but not full games. Major League Baseball has spread to lots of Web-connected devices with MLB.tv, including the Playstation 3 and Apple's iPhone and iPad. Boxee, which offers software for home theater PCs, recently opened a channel for streaming live NHL games with a subscription to NHL GameCenter LIVE.
Slowly, it's getting easier to watch sports without a cable subscription. UFC's move to Roku seems deliberately intended for the cable cutters, as there's no reason to take a chance on Internet streaming if you have a cable feed available.
The bigger picture is that set-top boxes are slowly turning into the a la carte television service that the cable industry dreads. With streaming video from Netflix and Hulu, pay-per-view content from iTunes and Amazon and now live sports, it's possible to pick and choose your own entertainment while saving money over monthly cable costs. You don't get nearly as much content for your dollar -- and that's the standard argument against a la carte -- but with so much content available already, that's not necessarily a problem.
