Doc Searls has a great post up about the travails of using Dish TV (you could say most of the same things about cable; the issues only vary a tiny bit). Towards the end, he gets to something I've noticed as well:

Later my wife shared a conversation she had with a couple other people in town who had gone through similar craziness at their homes. What happened to TV? one of them said. It's gotten so freaking complicated. I just hate it.

Yes, we have more capabilities than we had years ago, but we've also lost a lot in terms of simplicity. The TV setups we have vary by room, not just by household. It can be next to impossible to watch TV at a different house unless the owner controls the remote; no one else has any idea how the various inputs work, or which remote controls what.

Eventually, as we get to IP based TV, the complexity might fall back to a dull roar. In the interim, it's just going to suck. A lot.

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