TV/Electronics tech advances

15 years ago or thereabouts I had simple cell phone, then I had a phone and a Palm Pilot, then a phone, a pilot and an iPod.

I remember saying to someone at work that what I *really* wanted was the unification of all three, so that I was only carrying one gadget. Three was too many.

That did eventually happen, with the IPhone. For reasons, I didn't get into that level of smart phone right away, not until 2010, and I started with an Android, because I thought I was going to do a programming project for it (that never happened, and eventually I hated the device--Android at that time was stinky). But I did love the success of only having one device.

The problem with this is that the Pilot was better at one particular thing I needed to do, and adequate at the remainder, and I STILL cannot do that one thing equally well since having to give it up. This really bites, and I could damn sure solve it if I could program the iPhone in my preferred language (Java, which Apple doesn't allow). I'm not going back to android.

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Where is this going?

Why hasn't the television world unified all those devices along with the obvious expansions that should happen?

What is it I want? I want a single unit, so I don't have cables all over. I want that unit to do the cable/satellite interface (i.e., channel tuning, DVR, channel guide, etc), I want it to play a DVD/blu-ray, I'd like it to do all the online things that Apple TV does.

And I want to use voice control.

I don't want to spend a pile of time flipping through a hard-to-read channel guide. I'd like the screen to be touch-sensitive. I want to be able to say "play channel 24", "what's on TCM now?", "record this movie", "open the dvd tray"

Why isn't this the default of new TVs already? There's nothing new there that involves R&D, just a coordinated integration spec. You can imagine it being just slightly configurable, inasmuch as I need to be able to replace the "cable" interface sub-unit with a satellite equivalent. And I need to upgrade from DVD to blu-ray at some point. (OK, I can play a blu-ray through the xbox, but that's outside the voice-control, and many people don't have xboxes. And no reason the xbox couldn't have an external-peripheral interface that let me still have voice-control (which wouldn't have to be extra-complex), although as I think on it, that might only really have to be "power on xbox", "power off", and a couple other things. I wouldn't really want to use the voice to replace the xbox controller handheld.

What do you think? Have I missed something else that should be included?

You'd think this was already done, but it's not. ChromeCast uses your phone as the primary device, but I sure don't want that. I'm ok with it as the "remote", but not as the streaming source. The TV still has to do the heavy lifting, regardless of whether your phone is the remote or not. (and if it is, I should be able to talk to Siri, which accomplishes the voice control?)

Why couldn't my XBox be the unit with all the smarts? Well, it'd need a 2T hard disk, or allow an external one somehow, or a local-network storage (

What about Alexa? and FireTV? OK, apparently you can now get an Alexa TV. That sounds good, but it doesn't work with my satellite box.

Years ago you could get a PCI card that was a tv tuner, and then software that would use it. I had one, that was really nice, until the channels I wanted most to record (TCM) went digital and encrypted.

At the moment, it looks like the Alexa-TV/Echo-Dot combo is the closest. And available as a 65-inch 4K. But no cable/satellite. These devices are also, of course, intended to be used by folks with real broadband internet, not folks with satellite.

It shouldn't take an Advanced Degree(™) to figure this out.