I'm surprised you don't see more vendor lock-in presented as an alternative to this. There was some amazing integration available by the <i>1980s</i> (i. e. the RCA Dimensia system) but it relied on using a single manufacturer's products sold as a suite.<p>"Oh, we grudgingly and wrongly support HDMI-CEC, but if you just bought the BrandX AVR, DVR, Blu-Ray player, cable box, and waffle iron to go with your BrandX TV, they'd all use our exclusive BrandX Link (TM) and work properly." Well anyway until you replace one component in a couple years and it speaks BrandX Link 2.0 (R) (TM) (GMbH)<p>I suppose the one good thing of the fiasco that is cable/satellite STBs is that it <i>forces</i> some level of interoperability. No manufacturer can promise the end-to-end integrated dream when the local cable service uses some box sourced from some random unrelated firm.<p>I think part of it is also that we have a clear master-slave heirarchy, but no way to enforce it. I could see the TV, AVR, or set-top box being the "master" of different entertainment configurations-- as defined by "this is the primary remote you use." But you can still sit on the wrong remote and switch the sound to a different source than the picture. I could imagine a back-panel switch to toggle the other devices to a "slave mode" which would do things like disable input switching or put it in "listen to CEC commands only" modes.