Cartt.ca at The Cable Show: User interface continues to frustrate, but innovations are on the way

LAS VEGAS – Why can’t the cable TV user interface be as simple, elegant and useful as Apple’s iPod? That was the question facing a number of executives during a Monday afternoon session at the National Cable Telecommunications Association convention in Las Vegas. Cable operators, programmers, advertisers and so on, all agree that with the burgeoning content available on cable – the hundreds of channels and multiple thousands of hours of on demand content, the existing electronic program guides simply do not cut it. “The guide system has been pretty broken for a long time,” acknowledged Gemstar-TV Guide president Ryan...