What is missing in this article is a mention of the important shift in guidance from “what time is it on?” to “let me know when a new episode is available”. That is why we have Mefeedia Guides:
http://www.mefe...dia.com/guides/

Yahoo, as of last week, discontinued the saving of shows into their own calendar, (what I then could save to a file and import to Outlook or Google). Unreal.

Creative destruction is hard to swallow, just ask Kodak — anyone remember them?

The strategy would require the companies that are currently in this space to think of themselves as more of a commodity, providing the hardware, the network, and part of the content, and allowing the customer to choose the “experience.” So, you could throw TiVo in there as well (as one of these providers). Of course, bringing in more parties can add to the confusion in a customer service scenario. The customer will need to know who to contact when a problem occurs: service provider, hardware provider, UI/recommendation/search provider.

Or, perhaps these services could interface somehow with MythTV, and leverage the open source that it provides. Wow, there is just so many directions you can go in this space. The only service mentioned above that integrates with a set-top box (a TiVo) at this time is the Yahoo service. Perhaps the others should start partnering up with hardware makers such as Scientific-Atlanta/Cisco, Echostar, or Motorola. Hmm, this may limit choice. The key would really be for these companies feature in this post to form an alliance and standardize their service offerings to get the hardware makers and service providers to take them more seriously. If cable and satellite do not take notice, then it may all go to IPTV.

Why is your TV “habit” (a telling word) so complex that you need something requiring so much investment of infrastructure?

1) personalized views (by channel, by show rating)
2) it is integrated with 30boxes, the online calendar I use (which integrates nicely with iCal, Outlook, gCal, etc.)

The only thing it doesn’t have is being able to view all shows from one channel. Yahoo TV comes closest because it has this option AND it is integrated with TiVo. However, TiVo’s online scheduling feature is limited and thus I don’t use it anyway unless I’m traveling or need to record a show on the fly.

EvokeTV has a simple interface and it’s not bloated with distracting features.