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The past few months have been big ones for the future of television: the Boxee Box finally shipped, Hulu Plus rolled out of beta, the first Google TV boxes and TV sets came out, Apple rebooted Apple TV, and Netflix announced a streaming-only option. There's no denying that more and more households are canceling their cable or satellite in favor of getting their TV online, and while the numbers are still relatively small, it's actually possible to imagine a future for television that's not dominated by the likes of Comcast and Time Warner.

It's funny how much things have changed in just a few short years. Digital media players (i.e. boxes that stream stuff to your living room) have been around for a while, but it's only recently that they've actually become something the average person might consider buying. That's not because they've suddenly become cheaper or easier to use -- although they have. It's because they're starting to come bundled with apps that provide access to legal licensed content services like Hulu, Amazon Video On Demand, Vudu, iTunes, and Netflix that make it easier for the average person to watch a lot of the same programming they were getting via cable or satellite.

Access to content is helping drive sales of digital media players, but it also presents a challenge. If it's all about services, sooner or later consumers are going to base their buying decisions on whether or not a box supports the services they care about, and that is a precarious situation for anyone trying to sell a digital media player. If you're Apple the last thing you want to be selling is a commodity.

Since most service providers strive to be platform-agnostic -- i.e. they want to be on every box possible -- it stands to reason that sooner or later every box is going to have roughly the same line-up of services. That’s why it’s no surprise to see online services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Flickr, and YouTube all showing up on so many different devices; these guys all get that ubiquity is the path to success. It’s why they’re all making sure they’re on as many different mobile platforms as possible, too.

Once everyone starts offering more or less the same set of features and services on their box, it makes it tough to differentiate on any other basis than price, which is why it’s really not that surprising to see how aggressive prices have already become: Apple introduced its latest version of Apple TV at $99 and Roku’s line-up starts at a mere $59. If all you want is something for accessing Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube why would you pay more than $60? (This is why I think Apple, for instance, is going to have to add more services if they want Apple TV to be successful.) All this competition is great for consumers, but it's margin-killing for manufacturers.

I'm not saying there won't be variation or anything like that. One platform or another might get an exclusive on something for a few months. There will continue to be differences in terms of hardware (like support for HDMI, 1080p, etc) and software (like codec support). And without a doubt good UI and social features will help distinguish one product from another. It's just that I think over time we'll see something of a convergence in terms of content services, and you'll probably be able to access the same TV shows and movies on pretty much any platform.

Another potential pitfall for anyone trying to sell a standalone digital media box is that the same online video services that are driving interest in their boxes are also getting integrated into a variety of connected devices that many consumers already have in their living room, including TVs, game consoles, and Blu-ray disc players. So by the time we get to a point where you can reliably use the internet to replace what you're getting from cable or satellite (i.e. most of the programming the average person would want is available on-demand online) it's possible that most people will already have something that does the trick for them. Why buy yet another thing to connect to your TV if you can already get what you need on your Xbox or PS3? It's kind of like what's happening to MP3 players, fewer and fewer people see the need to buy an iPod when they already own an iPhone that does all the same things.

The current must-have service, of course, is Netflix, which is showing up tons of smartphones, tablets, TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, and digital media players and has both manufacturers and the studios concerned over its steadily increasing power. Netflix has about 17 million monthly subscribers, and in the US alone accounts for a whopping 20% of downstream traffic during prime time hours. These are big numbers that are sure to attract competitors, and it's rumored that Amazon and Microsoft are looking to launch competing streaming services. In the meantime, Netflix is so popular that not supporting it on your digital media player essentially puts you at a competitive disadvantage, witness the outcry over the Boxee Box not supporting Netflix at launch. It's easy to understand why users would be upset: from the average consumer's standpoint it's just a box connected to the internet, so there's no reason it shouldn't be able to access everything that's out there any less than a PC would be limited to browsing only certain sites.

The growing importance of services may eventually give Netflix, Hulu, and others a sizeable amount of leverage over the box makers. Apple was smart and/or lucky with the iPod that they were able to control both the hardware and the content service (i.e. the iTunes store). If you make the box, but don't control the service, there's always a risk that you'll end up at the mercy of a provider. We saw this early on when Hulu blocked access to Boxee users (they've finally come to an agreement that will bring Hulu Plus to Boxee) and more recently when so many networks and online video providers blocked Google TV users.

This isn't to say that the likes of Boxee and Roku are doomed. I'm actually optimistic, if for no other reason than we are at the very early stages of this shift and there is still tons of room for the market to grow. Eventually there are going to be millions of households that cancel their cable or satellite service, and for many of them a digital media player will be just what they're looking for. It's just that with the competition fierce and the balance of power shifting to service providers, carving out a successful business won't be easy.