My first days' impression of the iPad was "fantastic"--now how do I change channels? Wait! There are no channels. There is no TV. Yea, I read all the promos and so forth about the iPad but it seemed to be so good that surely there was some way I could watch live TV. There was plenty of "canned" TV and such.

Well, I do have a younger son that had an old "Classic" Slingbox. I installed that thing and voila, there was live TV (howbeit) in iPhone format. No problem, I'll just download the iPad Slingplayer from iTunes. So far, so good. Then I found out that the iPad version of Slingplayer would not work with the "Classic" player. By now I was hooked on live TV on my new iPad.
Back to the drawing board. It seems that Sling (Direct TV) did have a new Slingbox HD Pro that would work with the iPad Slingplayer. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. A few hundred dollars more for the new Slinger and finally I have perfect HD live TV on my iPad!!
It does require plenty of band width from my cable provider and modem-router. A simple IR Blaster to control my cable box and all is "good to go".
Add an HD Roko, along with Netflix and MLB.TV and life is good.

I'm sure there are other solutions out there.