It is a rhetorical question, but here is my answer nonetheless. I have a Panasonic Blu-Ray player that supposedly have Netflix streaming as one of its many streaming “channels”. Many of the channels never shed their “coming soon” labels. (Overpromise/underdeliver? Check. Failure to gain trust of customers? Check.) Looking up the weather forecast is frustratingly slow. Netflix streams are a stop and go experience, prone to crashes and reloading messages. We eventually started using it as just a dumb player. If we want to stream something to the TV, I just connect my laptop to it. This player was a well reviewed model by professionally geeky reviewers online. Curiously, none ever felt the need to mention the shortcomings of the user experience even though Netflix was noted a nice feature. (Marketing by feature matrix? Check. Failure to understand the importance of user experience despite watching Apple break profit records? Check. )

My experience is not the exception. I have other friends with these supposedly smart TVs, but many ended up buying an AppleTV or using gaming consoles. No wonder analysts are not counting these supposedly smart players in the market share calculations.

In light of that experience, I know why a user would spend money on a box that he doesn’t need *on paper*. Roku can easily differentiate itself when the competition is Panasonic and its ilk.