As first a MythTV, then SageTV and now NetFlix+Plex user, I have found the evolution of this tech both fascinating and frustrating.

I started a dozen or so years ago with MythTV and a Hauppauge tuner card, in an old PC directly connected to the (one) TV, and using an IR remote to control it. Over time I added another dual tuner card, and had both cable and OTA channels. MythTV had commercial skipping built in, and as I watched basically 100% recorded content, this was the beginning of me never seeing commercials.

Eventually I moved into a bigger house and got married, and we had two TVs. I didn't have a space PC, nor did I want to have an entire PC dedicated to being a client -- and at least at the time, using multiple MythTV clients with a single server was a bit clunky. After seeing the nice setup at a friend's, I jumped to SageTV and started using their media extender boxes (HD300)[1]. As a SageTV client they were better in every way: cheaper, less power, zero maintenance.

The HD300 remote even had programmable "TV power" and volume buttons, so since that was the only device connected it was also the only remote I needed. This feature has never been matched, and since moving away from SageTV I've always had either two remotes or had to program a Logitech Harmony remote.

I even moved the SageTV server PC to a utility room, disconnecting it from the TV and replaced it with an HD300.

SageTV still supported my tuner cards, and though not built-in, there were plugins to do commercial skipping. At some point in there I had also switched to a SiliconDust tuner to get digital channels.

Then, Google bought SageTV [2] and basically killed the core product.

It was around the same time my cable company was encrypting the last of all their digital channels (so my tuner cards were not usable anymore) and I was considering Netflix, so I started looking for a device to replace the HD300 that could still get SageTV content, but also Netflix, YouTube and whatever else.

I went through a bunch of sub-par solutions: BluRay player, Roku box, some other (pre-Android) streaming box and a Chromecast. I even resorted to low-power mini-ITX PC running Windows -- but the only way to get NetFlix was to use a keyboard and mouse. The Chromecast came close, but it was annoying to have to use a phone/laptop to view anything.

Everything just felt like it was getting worse and worse from my old SageTV setup. SageTV couldn't handle NetFlix, and even the SageTV YouTube app broke because YouTube's old API was finally discontinued.

We moved again, and had a child (and our TV viewing went down considerably), so really just use a single TV now. I eventually settled on using an Nvidia Shield (running AndroidTV), and it's better in basically every way except for OTA/cable/DVR stuff -- and so we entirely dropped that. I stuck the Chromecast on the other TV that we just use for the treadmill and can live with that.

There's a certain irony here. There's a lot more available on Digital OTA now (getting around encrypted digital cable), and now the current software that runs on modern hardware is able to do Live TV and DVR again... but is it relevant?

For one, I've spent 12 years without commercials, so without the automatic commercial skip even the DVR isn't that interesting to me. Secondly, I've replaced all my old media sources and/or stopped caring about the ones I couldn't replace.

It seems to me that DVR software, the client hardware and online media software/services have all had their own peaks and valleys over the years, and they've never all peaked at the same time.

The combination of HD300-style client hardware, with AndroidTV's online content apps, SageTV's LiveTV/DVR/commercial skipping, and the unencrypted digital cable of ~2010 would be my ideal -- I just don't ever see it happening ever again.

[1] http://www.geektonic.com/2010/08/sagetv-hd300-hd-theater-gee...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+buys+sagetv&tbm=nws