This is the Golden Age of Television—not only as the blooming of lush and addictive entertainment, but also as an arms race for the best living-room technology.

Just days after Amazon announced its new Fire TV box, the Verge snagged exclusive images of Google's new Android TV product. Both services let couch-potatoes pull up apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime Video on their TV screens, basically turning the idiot box into a big, smart iPad. Weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal announced that Apple, which has sold about 25 million Apple TV "hockey pucks," is talking to Comcast about building a new streaming-TV service.

Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV all have the word TV in them, so you might easily confuse them for old-fashioned TV. But they're not old-fashioned TV, at all.

TV, as we know it, is cable packages and live channels. But the new players are building an Internet-video experience around apps with very little access to live television. It's not TV. It's Internet TV. Even as these tech upstarts are battling each other for living-room dominance, they're also battling the legacy of traditional television and the sturdy cable bundle. Here's the tale of the tape: