It always felt like a missed opportunity. The US transition to digital TV was almost perfectly aligned to slot into the HTPC trend. You'd be able to make perf

It always felt like a missed opportunity. The US transition to digital TV was almost perfectly aligned to slot into the HTPC trend. You'd be able to make perfect-quality recordings from broadcast (remember when timeshifting was valuable?) and the built-in EPG data would reduce the need for some clumsy external data source. But it felt like we never transitioned smoothly. I can recall the Media Centre stuff for Windows Vista being pretty clunky. I suspect part of it was that people were under-appreciating the synergy. I liked TV cards for "I can watch in a 20cm window while doing other stuff" but all the momentum was going into terrible 10-foot interfaces that worked best with a remote control.