Smart TVs are the new fashionable thing for popular TV-manufacturing companies to push on consumers. But we've still yet to see a really compelling, easy-to-use product trotted out-from CES or anywhere else. The more rounds that smart TVs go on the shelves at electronics expos, the more they seem to suffer from the same fundamental problem: a failure to communicate, or more appropriately, a failure to receive communication.

More than anything, the debut -- all 13 episodes -- of Netflix's "House of Cards" raises questions about what the binge viewing approach to programming will mean for TV as we know it. For those who haven't experienced binge viewing, it's what happens when you have an entire season of TV shows on DVDs or a streaming service and can watch as many episodes as you want.

It's a relentless drumbeat: the TV industry is dead. It's just like the music industry. 20somethings are avoiding the cord. I want HBO a la carte. YouTube will kill cable. The TV industry is dead.

As the phenomenon of predicting the death of TV via cord cutters is waning, it's being replaced by a plausible (at first) sounding theory: cord nevers. ?Whereas a cord cutter is one who cancels their Pay-TV service for free/streaming alternatives, a cord never is, roughly, a person under the age of 22 who, upon renting their first apartment after college, never subscribes for TV services in the first place. ?My theory at this point is these people may live happily cable-free for a year or few, but sooner or later, they'll pay.

As the primary way of watching TV shifts from a traditional broadcast, linear, scheduled, single-device mode to one that is all on-demand, on all devices, available at any time, anywhere, the consumer's TV watching world is suddenly filled with a curse of choices. If everything we watch requires us to navigate menus, pick from lists, and choose, choose, choose - TV watching is in danger of losing its primary function: escapism.

I've been trying to complete an opinion piece about Intel and TV. Unfortunately, the news landscape keeps making right turns and I'm having to rewrite this as it does. Hopefully, I can bring a bit of clarity to the news of the last couple weeks and describe why Intel's virtual MSO plans are going to find a hard road ahead.

HBO and Universal just renewed a distribution deal. ?For the next 10 years. If you are in any ways connected to the TV industry, be it for the past, present, or future of it, this is quite significant. ?Why?

It's fun to write about the "death of TV" (or flip flop on it, whatever). ?Why it's so fun, I'm not sure, but I have a hunch it's because... It's a HUGE industry ($500+B/year if not more) It's been utterly untouched by the Internet (so far - a thing that really rankles a lot of people, mostly tech bloggers) The newspaper and music industries both got trashed, so why not TV too? It's controlled by a very small number of extremely powerful and wealthy companies The aforementioned companies have a perception of (a) greedy profiteering, (b) being dinosaurs, and (c) restricting people from doing whatever they want with content, which also tends to rankle said tech bloggers

It seems that technology triggers are often accompanied by the hype of future potential benefits, while the real value is elusive and slower to appear than industry journalists, analysts, or pundits would like, but I am going to lay out 10 scenarios that will develop in this still nascent industry during 2013.

Television has been a lot of things in its 60-some-year life, but one thing it was not, until this century, with certain rule-proving exceptions, was cool. It was the home of "Father Knows Best" and "The Andy Williams Show," "Dynasty" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" - something for the whole family to enjoy, when three broadcast networks ruled the nation and competed for viewers of all ages.