That must be the original theatrical cut playing on Starz. If you want to see all the scenes you mentioned minus Roy in the mother ship, you need to watch the director's cut. Just get the Blu-Ray, it's cheap and you can watch whatever version you want in high definition.
As for the house, I thought it looked very appropriate for a late seventies family with three young kids. All the scenes in the house were filmed in a real house in Mobile, AL, not on sets. The production crew bought the house so they could do what they wanted to it during filming, then they sold it for a profit when they were finished.
My Top 5 Movies: "Dazed & Confused", "Close Encounters", "Vertigo", "Melancholia", "Rushmore"