[jfb]

What else would one expect from a commodity business? The manufacturers are desperate to differentiate themselves from each other and from their own previous year's models, but their strengths are most certainly not in software, still less in UX. The manufacturers see their margins shriveling and are casting about, but it's pointless. See Panasonic making noise about getting out of the panel business -- it doesn't matter that they make the best TV sets; they can't possibly compete against contract LCD OEMs.

Of course the future is TVs as monitors; but getting there will be painful.