By Greg Hazley

Ad agency Hill Holliday had five families replace their cable TV service with a networked TV device (Roku, Boxee, Google TV, Apple TV, XBox 360) for one week.

"People have well-formed expectations about how a TV should work, and the devices didn’t seem to confirm well to these mental models," the agency noted, among several other findings.

The results should be heartening to cable companies, for the moment at least.

Hill & Knowlton's Ben Shipley blogged: "The mistake these platforms seem to be making is that placing a consumer in a space where they have unlimited choice as to what they want to watch has a counterintuitive result. Rather than perfectly meeting their every need, these platforms trap users in decision inertia by forcing an active role in the decision making process."