I would say you're slow to adapt. Which is pretty common, especially in people of your age. You're definitely more savvy than my parents and IIRC you're a little older than my mom. I had a hard enough time teaching her how to use an iPod and a Harmony remote.
Anyways, cable companies have made app's as a last ditch effort to try to save their cable TV business. As far as app, application, program goes, they all mean the same thing and "app" is the more common vernacular these days. As is no physical media. That's also why you see so little progress/innovation being made on the DVR front. At this point, it's like why bother. There's generally only 2 TV shows I would kinda like to see as they air. 1 is available directly on Amazon Instant Video for streaming on release nights. The other I COULD get through HBO Go, but I'm not paying their prices so I'll just wait for the Bluray and rip it. But in both cases, it's streamable right from an app on any device I want and from anywhere.
I want to examine this concept of "slow to adapt." I don't dispute what you say.
But everything forward of the Industrial Revolution was an effort by human civilization to reduce work and simplify or just make possible what had not been possible before. So we seek some status-quo -- what car we drive or whether we drive one at all, how we communicate -- by e-mail, telephone, text or Twitter. The machine or infrastructure that supports the status quo becomes a matter of routine. Where we once got off the sofa, walked ten feet and twisted a knob on the TV, we simply point a remote control. We keep comfy on the couch. Everything at our fingertips.
And thus we came into this computer application (hardware plus programs) of an HTPC or HTPC function. We have surmounted the learning curve. Media Center and similar applications like SageTV, MediaPortal, KODI and so forth provide some variation in what is otherwise an interface that folds in pictures, music, movies, videos and "Live TV."
Now, I can get Netflix separate from how it was knitted to WMC -- a feature no longer available in the latter. I can get all sorts of subscription options. How many different goddam subscriptions do I have to manage? How many different and unintegrated applications, players or browsers do I have to use, when I was happiest with just a single interface? And if I subscribe to this or that service, when does such a subscription become a runaway train? Or is it just a hemorrhage in my wallet? Do I want to pay X dollars so I can simply view a single movie? Do I want to do the accounting and bookkeeping for that? Or do I just settle on the uncertainty of a bill and its variable amount at month's end?
It just seems with the pace of technical change and shifts in markets or fade-out in a prevailing means of obtaining media content, all the labor-saving advantages or time saved through convenient routine is eroded by throwing up one new learning curve after another.
what did I do in the last week or so? I finally can say I've built the basis for a home security system accessible from any PC in the house and any tablet, laptop or cell-phone. I don't like fiddling with a cell-phone to make these configurations. The touch-screen is too damn small.
So I can now see the images from my security cameras on my tablet, and I can get cable-TV on my tablet.
I just get exasperated when I have to work with these new touch-screen interfaces -- get familiar with Android and other tasks. I spend as much time figuring out how to set up and configure some lifestyle "solution" as I spend using it.
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