I lived four years of college with zero television. In grad school, I found myself making regular visits to a dorm with a TV set and realized, you know, I can afford my own TV set, so I bought one. Back then, I carefully juggled VHS tapes to make sure I could get my weekly fix of the handful of shows I cared about.

Now, with the TiVo, it's all so much easier. I don't think I watch any more TV than before, but when I do watch, it's so much more satisfying to zap the commercials and otherwise control the experience.

As to specific hardware, my AppleTV is flaking out. At this stage, it will run maybe an hour with an ice pack on the top, much less otherwise. (Apple had the idea of thermally connecting the Intel chip to the case, and avoiding any fans. Sadly, they also never provisioned sufficient surface area to radiate all the heat it generates.) There's some temptation to replace the AppleTV with a new Mac mini, but then I think you don't get the full spectrum of content you can get on the AppleTV. I'm not clear on exactly how this has evolved.

Of course, there are other vendors, such as Amazon, offering content through an Internet-connected TiVo. (And, via pyTivo and other such services, TiVo can painlessly play content you download on your computer via BitTorrent in whatever format.) I'll be particularly intrigued this fall when the Boxee Box finally ships, as Boxee is frantically working out content distribution deals. Maybe they'll accomplish what Apple has not. Likewise, there's the forthcoming Google box.

Suffice it to say that there will be a variety of technologies competing for your ala carte TV watching dollars in time for this year's Christmas season. It's presently unclear who the real winner will be, if any.