Despite the pained pleas from OXM’s Stream Team, if you enjoy TV, sports, and generally following shows episode-by-episode, we can’t recommend severing your ties with a traditional cable company and only relying on your Xbox just yet. Between unpredictable apps and shaky service, there’s just too much uncertainty in Xbox Live’s entertainment delivery system right now to advocate laying off your cable company.

So until things change, here are five reasons not to drop your cable just yet for Xbox Live.

1) Day Old Media
You could argue this is the biggest kicker in any attempt to make Xbox Live your sole source of television: almost nothing on it is current. Meaning, even new episodes of an incredibly timely show like, say The Daily Show, are from the day before. We give Microsoft alot of credit for pushing to get live TV on Xbox, but it still balked when the price was too high.

About the only things you can watch live on Xbox right now are very select sports games (often college, at that) on the free ESPN app. Which can be nice right now during college basketball season, but once March Madness hits, and all the games move to CBS, you’ll be out of luck. You can’t even get the biggest television event of the entire year, the Super Bowl, on Xbox Live. 

Past that, let’s say some major news event occurrs, and you just want to stay glued to the television for updates. Xbox Live’s two current news apps, MSNBC and The Today Show, offer only clips and short segments of programs instead of even a full episode of say, The Rachel Maddow Show. Even if you're tempted to view a news clip, you'll often find yourself watching a commercial beforehand. Which, okay, we understand commercials are a necessary evil with TV, but even before a miniscule news short that may or may not be in the public's interest? Eesh.

You’d think because part of the MSNBC name does in fact refer directly to Microsoft, you might be able to maybe stream the channel live, but sadly no. So if you’ve already cancelled your cable and some major news crisis unravels, you better stick with the Internet because Xbox Live won’t be a whole lot of help.

2) Unreliable Apps
One of the biggest assets with a traditional cable subscription is reliability. Barring some major circumstance like a power outage or, you know, a football game in overtime, you can rest easy knowing that when NBC promises that the season premiere of, say, 30 Rock will be on Thursday night at 8 p.m, it’ll be right there, playing on your TV at that time. 

Up until recently, Hulu Plus on Xbox Live did have the most recent episodes of 30 Rock, until around the premiere of season six earlier this month. Now, new episodes of 30 Rock are web-only, meaning you can still watch them online with a subscription to Hulu Plus, just not on your Xbox.

Oh wait, what am I saying!?

You can watch new episodes of 30 Rock, if you pay for them via Zune Marketplace for $2-to-$3 per episode, or get a season pass for $40-$50. Last season there were 24 episodes of 30 Rock, so even if you went for the standard definition season pass, you’d only be saving $8 (which you could put towards one month of Hulu Plus).

There's also been the colossal disappointment of the UFC app late last year, which lead Xbox Live to pony up for another free fight and a free month of Xbox Live Gold for every subscriber who committed to the debacle. Consumer confidence!

3) Poor Communication
Imagine a cable company just deciding one day it wasn’t going to carry a specific show on any given network with zero customer notice. It wouldn't happen. It’d be like, “Sorry American Idol fans, but Cable Giant doesn’t offer the new season of American Idol on television anymore. If you want to visit our website, you’ll have the ability to stream new episodes of the show in the next couple of days, which we’re more than confident will satiate your desire to see who advances in the competition." Yeah, there’d be a massive outrage, possibly riots, and a whole lot of cancellations. On Hulu Plus and Xbox Live though, programs get added and removed all the time, without notice. 

When the UFC app crashed during its debut run, the app's Twitter account literally told followers the night of the event to just go ahead and make different plans to watch the fight. That's like waiting for a friend to pick you up for a party, then getting a text two hours after the party started to just find another ride.

4) The FiOS/XFinity Fix
I know what you’re saying. There is a way to fix a lot of the problems on this page, and that’s by getting a cable subscription and just watching TV through your Xbox. Of course, that would require a cable subscription, but as you’re learning, that might be the best way to go for the moment. Just don't toss that good 'ol cable box, since the Xbox Live apps for cable giants Comcast and Verizon sound like they'll fail to match the breadth of their tried-and-true brethren.

5) No End In Sight
The real reason to keep your cable subscription right now is because there really appears to be no solutions for any of these problems on Xbox Live emerging in the immediate horizon. So don’t stop those Cable Town bills from rolling into your inbox just yet. You’ll regret it if you do. Trust me. By the way, know anywhere I can watch the Super Bowl this year?