there are many failed attempts at cracking the living room -- the cable companies make most of the money and they have little incentive to truly innovate the boxes that they are "renting" out to their customers.
to get truly elegant UI's that are powerful enough to do anything useful with all the TV signals (HD, etc) requires significant hardware. when Tivo was ported over to comcast boxes, most of the features that make it tivo were slashed since the boxes comcast gives to customers were significantly cheaper and underpowered.
most cable companies have a monopoly in the physical area they are servicing. where's the incentive to increase cost by upgrading equipment for your customers when the minimal viable product is happily received by the smith household?