every time ive thought about setting up mythtv, i never did because i knew it would take me hours, it would cost money and time to find the right tuner cards, and there would be no particular guarantee that i could actually get it to all work in the end.

Are there many non-techie users of XBMC/MythTV?

And anyway, ideas are worthless if execution is poor. if google creates an integrated seemless product then it doesn't really matter if XBMC has been doing it for 10 years or not. Its like saying that the (original) iPhone would be useless because other phones had had browsers/email/whatever for years. Apple executed better, thats all that mattered

I've used MythTV on and off for years but what will impress me is interoperability. I want to be able to hook this into my current set-top-box and for it to work seamlessly. They seem to have that with Dish Network.