When the news hit a few days ago that Amazon would be banning the sale of Apple TV and Google Chromecast devices from their site I was shocked…

…that anyone was shocked.

To be fair, it is a little surprising that Amazon would take such a strong action against two partners that they work closely with in other areas (on iPhones/iPads/Android devices, etc). But this seems like par for the course when it comes to technology in the living room. That is to say, if there is a way to make things as frustrating as possible for consumers, those competing in the space will find that way and execute on that plan.

For years, we’ve been told by various technology companies that they’ve figured out the living room. Sony had it “figured out” with Playstation. Microsoft had it figured out with Xbox. Google had it figured out with Google TV. And Apple is seemingly always on the verge of “cracking” it — including, perhaps, later this month with the new Apple TV.

And yet, here we are. It’s 2015, and the best way to get access to all the content you want is still to sign up for a cable television bundle and to augment it with various other services, like Netflix.

For a long time, we’ve been led to believe that the main hold-up is content creators and rights’ holders. That is, the people that control the television content are wary of giving control to any one party (aside from the legacy cable companies) lest they find themselves in a position that the music industry found itself in after iTunes. Annoying, but makes some sense.

But now, what we have is those forward-thinking technology companies going to war with one another. Amazon apparently doesn’t want to sell Apple TVs or Google Chromecasts because they have their own device, the Fire TV/Stick, which does much of the same thing as those two. More importantly, they have their own streaming service, through Prime, which neither of those devices currently support.

Maybe this is a play to ensure those devices support the Prime streaming service (with a sweetheart deal, no doubt). Or maybe these are in fact the first shots fired in a new battle on the content side of things. Maybe it’s not NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, HBO, Showtime, etc, we should be worrying about. Maybe it’s Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and the like.

Those guys are currently the ones spending a lot of money to acquire and to produce content. So far, Apple and Google have largely stayed out of this fray, but can they really be that far behind? Maybe Apple never dips its toes into pure content production, per se, but is there any doubt that they would sign an exclusive or “first look” deal to get certain types of content into the iTunes/Apple TV ecosystem if it would ship more hardware? Of course not.

And so we’re stuck in a world where in order to get all the content you want you need at least two, and perhaps even three set-top boxes in your living room. You need some combination of a cable box and a Roku/Apple TV/Fire TV/Chromecast/Xbox/Playstation. Yes, there is a lot of overlap in many of these boxes. But if you want access to absolutely everything, you’re going to need at least two of these boxes, and probably more.

And my guess is that this number of boxes you need will actually keep going up, rather than down.

The Holy Grail of the living room is to be able to walk in, hit one button, ideally “Power,” and to sit back and let the content roll before your eyes. The reality is more like: hit the “Power” button, try to remember which one of the HDMI inputs is connected to the device you want, cycle between those inputs until you land at the right one, then grab the other remote for that device and start searching for the content you want. It’s a nightmare.

For all its flaws, that’s the beauty of cable. The industry was able to take over the living room in such a way that turning on the television was the same thing as turning on cable. It was always on in the background, and its input was the default. None of these new boxes can get to such a lofty status because there is the aforementioned need for multiple boxes (including, still, the cable box!).

Yes, Microsoft and others (like TiVo), have tried to alleviate this issue by creating boxes that allow cable to “pass through” their own services. But these are hacked-together solutions at best, and convoluted headaches at worst. It’s never going to work this way.

And I’m increasingly worried that it’s never going to work, period.

Because players like Netflix and Amazon are now garnering so much power with their original shows, they hold bargaining chips outside of the usual television content walls. And this means that any device that wants to try to “rule” the living room will have to deal with even more partners. And the incentives are all over the place. Basically everywhere but where they should be: on the consumer experience.