I think I'm there.  Dis is more patient with people here than I am, so he's the right person to nurture a thread like this.  All I see is the usual suspects doing their thing.  MS having something disruptive just can't happen to them.

The reality, though, is that the X1 will game and game hard for us (we'll see in less than a week) but a feature like this will capture the mainstream media's attention and your average joe will be interested in it too.  My sister is not a gamer at all but her sons LUST for a new game console.  Show her this and she would be more inclined to buy one for them because she'd want to use this feature.  Granted that's extremely anectdotal, but I'd be extremely surprised if it was a minority reaction to when the mainstream catches on.

I personally wish the Wii U and PS4 had a similar feature, as it would ensure this next generation of consoles would find bigger success ...

It is being aimed at the minstream audience for sure. The regular media has been all over the xbox one, even if the gaming media hates it. Other companies can try and copy it, but they may have patent or licensing issues. Microsoft has made some great partnerships over the years in the TV and Media world. They have an exclusive partnership for rebox instant(will most likely be the service to take down netflix, and gamefly) for home consoles, which they have also partnered with verizon(a huge cell phone, home phone, internet, and cable company) . They have a deal with pandora also right now I believe. People may be forgetting that MS started all of this with the 360, it will be hard for others to play catch up with all the deals that have to be made for this kind of stuff. With all that said, I dont think any company can provide all of those features, and voice control hardware and software for 99-150 dollars. At least we haven't seen it yet, do google or apple tv have voice controls or gesture input? Yes TV will eventually have all of this built in, but that will be down the line and will not be cost effective for most consumers who already have a TV they like.  Sony is actually at a disadvantage in this area as they also compete with other media producing companies. If I made movies I wouldn't want my compititors company to control the distribution of my media.

Microsoft has been "in" television for years.   Over 23% of the set-top box market was theirs until they sold MediaRoom to Ericcson.  They've been doing IPTV since 2001.  Many services that provide Internet-based television/movie content delivery use Microsoft software and services to do so.

They don't want to be a "Channel", though they do have a division called coincidently enough, Channel 9.  Essentially, the video production service for Microsoft.  They don't want to own the content.  They just want to build and provide a layer to access it.  That layer being software integrated into the Xbox One.

The Xbox One is still a video game machine.  Nothing added to the capabilities of the Xbox One prevent it from offering gaming services.  Your smartphone (if you have one) is still a phone, but doesn't it do more than just make phone calls?  Doesn't that extended feature set make it more useful?  You probably aren't old enough to remember or even had a black book.  Or later a Personal Data Assistant (PDA) and a mobile cell phone (aka a bag phone).  Or a Pocket PC Phone which offered the capabilities of a Pocket PC, a PDA, and a cell phone.  See, technology evolves to add features that are useful (sometimes some that aren't) to things we think are fine the way they are. 

For most people (the majority of people) the console is in the living room, family room, or media room.  A place where people congregate to do more than just play games.  Enhancing the capabilities of a device, so it is used more often, increases the importance in the use and daily lives of those people.  Anyone who had the opportunity to be in 77m homes would do what they can to position their device so that not only are the people who bought it for gaming using it, but the rest of the family has a use for it too. 

Do you ever get to a point where you realize that people are either incapable of seeing or just too caught-up in their own mindset of how things are to see what both the author and you are envisioning?

Some people won't get it, and others will ceasingly try to never get it.

It's about a providing a multi-sourced, single-point content delievery service where the source and delivery are ubiquitous and transparent.

You as the viewer simply ask for content.  The Xbox One serves up that content.

I honestly believe Microsoft will be offering a partnership with Gamefly for instant game rentals via Xbox Live.  If not, offering their own rental service.

You have your points, but dont try to assume you know my age. It devalues your whole post.

I do wonder if the Xbox one will be able to ever sell as much as the 360 did though. I think the pluses dont make up for the minuses.

Do you not see that that is no advantageous at all to a lot of people. I don't want to also pay for xbox live, netflix, hulu, per episode, per movie, etc, or watch commercials again. The only thing I want is for my cable box to stop showing program times for shows on channels I'm not subscribed to, not offer up a whole bunch more options I don't have access to.

Cable already does it all. Kids watch their cartoons on demand (no commercials in the kids streams luckily), my wife and I use the dvr to watch the stuff we want. We both fast forward through a lot of stuff just for the interesting bits. Tv or just the amp is usually on as background noise as well since it also has radio channels. At night it's on with some boring rerun or something to fall asleep with.

Xbox one as a cable box replacement/enhancement is pretty pointless unless it has multi room DVR capabilities. For a single person living by himself with selective viewing, iptv is probably cheaper then cable. It's a lot less interesting for families.

No need. Instant game rentals would be done through MS and the cloud, no need for gamefly there. Game rentals are already done by redbox and MS is already partnered with them. I see gamefly going down, and netflix too(tehy have a hard time with licsening deals and I dont think they can fix it, other streaming services are owned by the content creators so they are slowly pulling out of netflix)

Do you not see that that is no advantageous at all to a lot of people. I don't want to also pay for xbox live, netflix, hulu, per episode, per movie, etc, or watch commercials again. The only thing I want is for my cable box to stop showing program times for shows on channels I'm not subscribed to, not offer up a whole bunch more options I don't have access to.

Cable already does it all. Kids watch their cartoons on demand (no commercials in the kids streams luckily), my wife and I use the dvr to watch the stuff we want. We both fast forward through a lot of stuff just for the interesting bits. Tv or just the amp is usually on as background noise as well since it also has radio channels. At night it's on with some boring rerun or something to fall asleep with.

Xbox one as a cable box replacement/enhancement is pretty pointless unless it has multi room DVR capabilities. For a single person living by himself with selective viewing, iptv is probably cheaper then cable. It's a lot less interesting for families.

Me assuming your age doesn't devalue my post at all, as I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you are young and may not be as knowledgable of the integration of features and services into technology.

No, you devalue yourself when you don't fairly take all logical perspectives into consideration when you post.  If you're old enough to know how technology has evolved to integrate features and services, then you undermine your own point and argument by ignoring the fact that it happens and it IS a benefit to consumers.