In the meantime, the TV screen lost relevance to first desktop computers, then laptop computers, then smartphones. Microsoft was the only large company who consistently hammered on this idea (Encarta, DHTML, MSN, HD-DVD's HDi, Xbox 360's dashboard), and with a vested interest in the health of the desktop ecosystem, but they couldn't execute this first convergence -- and ironically, neither the second convergence of desktops and smartphones. Apple and Google leapfrogged them in critical ways, and this interactive consumption revolution took place on the latter two's portable smartphones instead.
The vision in the early-mid 90s was for something like MSNBC to be an interactive TV channel, delivered by the TV/cable provider, where you could chat/vote/etc through the TV and customize your experience.
That sounds similar to what we have now (with their cable channel, accompanying website, app, Twitter, etc) but the technical details and delivery mechanisms ended up being totally different.
I think the really key thing here is that general-purpose computing won over purpose-built devices. Yeah, an mid-90s embedded system probably had a better UI in many ways than even a 2018 browser-based system, but that embedded system could only do one thing well while the browser system can do many, many things — and some of them quite well indeed!
Moreover, it turns out that all those industry committees couldn't accurately predict the future. Neither could the free Web folks (anyone remember the Semantic Web?) — but because the free folks let anyone do anything, they let the winners do their thing. Meanwhile, the centralised industry committees didn't allow experimentation — or when they did, didn't allow enough. C.f. OSI vs TCP/IP, X.400 vs SMTP &c.
It still boggles my mind that basic web skills (HTML, CSS, etc.) didn't proliferate in academic settings, outside of tech curriculum. The death of most of the appliance devices was so fast that people never really tried to learn it.
You aren't going to make everybody a programmer, but the arc of history would have been different if that was the baseline.
Anyone else remember reading that chapter in Bill Gates’ book “The Road Ahead” back in the ‘90s?
Turns out that like CD-i no one cared. Liberate had a blockbuster IPO which fell to earth long before anyone could sell. (I think my boss from that time actually worked on CD-i)
I would also argue that the "smart" TVs that have Netflix and Amazon Movies and services like that built in are also candidates for the "TV/PC Hybrid" moniker.