Will integrated tuners kill the set-top box star?

Ever so slowly, TVs are starting to have built-in ATSC and QAM tuners as a quick scan of product cards at a local Best Buy and Circuit City will confirm. So what is going to happen to all the set-top boxes? Right now we got to tell you that there isn't one of us willing to give up our 'box and deal with our TVs proprietary programming guide but they will improve. More and more HDTVs are building-in DVRs and home networking options so it is just a matter of time till TVs have all the same options a standard set-top. IMS Research, a leader in forecasting this type of stuff, is reporting that will TVs may have some sort of built-in capabilities, the two options will co-exist for sometime. Like we said to start with, our set-top boxes have special place in our media racks. Even though there may be a love hate relationship involved, they work (most of the time) and are vastly superior to the majority of other options.