Yet another reason I feel that Google TV, Apple TV, Microsoft TV, Roku (any others?) (not necessarily in that order) have a bright future.<p>For TV manufacturers, the software side of things is an "annoyance project" from a cultural as well as sales perspective. They <i>have</i> throw in some software to check off boxes in reviewers' checklists, but good software is expensive to design and develop, and something whose real value is apparent in daily use. Not in the "wall of TVs" at a big box store where all TVs running the same demo loop.<p>My TV's interface for viewing photos from a USB disk is appallingly bad. And I don't see the TV guys fixing this problem anytime soon: it's just not in their DNA.<p>I predict that branded third-party OS's will be common on TV's in three years (if not sooner).<p>Another example along similar lines is the firmware on digital cameras. One feature I would like is for my camera to take <i>two</i> pictures. In the second version, the image areas it used to infer aperture+exposure settings, and the focus points should be marked with rectangles etc. I've often noticed that an image that looks sharp on the LCD is not properly focused when seen on a big monitor. Such a setting would help me improve my skill.