I completely agree. I have a TiVo HD, and continue to use and enjoy it... but the problem is that I still have to deal with my cable company. I had to pester them for 2 months to get a CableCard out of 'em, and they still charge me $4 a month to rent it.
There's just something ridiculous about paying for information delivery, only to be charged even more money to decode the proprietary signal they send to you.
Before the TiVo, we had analog-only cable, and a Philips stand-alone DVR/DVD burner that worked just fine.
But this day and age, if you want more than 3 or 4 HD channels or even want to think about some of the geekier SD cable stations, you're still stuck having to get equipment from the cable company. And frankly, for the vast majority of people, it's just cheap enough not to care that it sucks.