With all the competition from streaming video and sexy competitors, Tivo may seem like an outdated relic. However, its new partnership with smart TV app startup Flingo may change that.

As of today, Tivo owners can “fling” video content from the web to their TV screens using Flingo’s technology. Say you spend time finding videos from services like YouTube and Vimeo on your desktop or mobile devices. When you find a video online, you’ll use a bookmarklet via a web browser to send it to the Tivo box. The process is similar to what Boxee has done in the past, but with a greater focus on specific devices.

“Discovery should not be done on a TV screen,” Flingo CEO and co-founder Ashwin Navin said in an interview with VentureBeat. I’m inclined to agree, because trying to navigate through the billions of videos on a native YouTube smart TV app using only a simple TV remote is both aggravating and fruitless.

Under the new partnership, Tivo owners also gain access to Flingo apps for a variety of premium content providers, including TMZ, A&E, History, Showtime, and TV Guide. Additionally, Tivo owners get exclusive interactive apps via a new “Launchpad for Tivo” platform.

“The cost of setting up an app within Tivo on the platform [for broadcasters] is almost negligible at this point if you’re already got that content available on the web,” Navin said. Presumably, that means more content providers should jump on the Tivo bandwagon in the future, which is good news for the set-top box company’s customers.

While it’s not in the immediate future, Navin said Flingo eventually wants to add more interactivity to what’s being watched on Tivo via its SyncApps technology. The SyncApps tech can detect what you’re watching in just a few seconds and communicate that information to your television, smartphone, or computer — sort of like a location-based service for what you’re watching. You can then use that tech within smart TV apps to pull up social content or services related to whatever it is you’re viewing, thus cutting down on multitasking.

Founded in 2008, Flingo has previously raised $8 million in funding from August Capital, Mark Cuban, and others.

Over the course of a year, I test dozens of consumer electronics products. A lot of them are junk. This year, I tested a router from Cisco that required a reset every few days.

But there are five products I’ve used this year that not only work as advertised but are genuinely a pleasure to use.

Sonos music system

Sonos sells a range of wireless speakers and accessories that let you easily create a whole-house music system without fishing cables through your walls. You can play your iTunes collection, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Cloud Player, and many other services throughout your home. And you can synchronize music across multiple rooms, controlling it all from any room with a PC, Mac, or iOS or Anrdoid device. I’ve even taken to leaving outdated smartphones throughout my apartment to serve as Sonos controllers. The speakers are beautiful and sound great. The controls on each speaker are Apple-like minimalist: volume up/down and mute.

The biggest knock I have against Sonos is that it doesn’t natively support Apple’s AirPlay music streaming. (It’s possible to add a kludgy version of AirPlay to Sonos by connecting an AirPort Express to the Sonos line in jack. But that defeats the elegance of both AirPlay and Sonos.) The smaller Sonos speaker, Play : 3, costs $299; the larger Play : 5 is $399. A subwoofer is available for $699 (I haven’t tested that).

Harmony 900 and Harmony Touch remotes

If you have a lot of devices in your home entertainment system, chances are you also have a bowl of remotes. The nicer your system, the harder it is to use. Unless you have a Harmony remote. Logitech’s Harmony remotes let you control all of your infrared devices from one remote. Harmony remotes are based on an activity metaphor. Instead of selecting a specific device like a Blu-ray player or stereo system, you select an activity, such as listening to music or watching TV. (This metaphor is beginning to breakdown as multiple devices can accomplish the same task. My Apple TV, Roku, TiVo, and Blu-ray player can all play movies.) In my home, selecting ‘watch TV’ turns on the TV and the amplifier. It also makes sure that the TiVo input is selected on my amplifier and the TV is set to HDMI 1. My ultimate test is whether people who visit me can figure out how to watch TV; they can.

My favorite feature on the Harmony Touch is the ability to set your favorite TV channels. In the thousand channel cableverse, getting to the few channels you like can be hard. With the Harmony Touch, select your favorite channels during the setup process and you get 1-click buttons on the touch screen for them. (It’s also possible to have this functionality on the Harmony 900 but is much more difficult to set up.)

Unlike cheap universal remote controls, Harmony remotes are extremely customizable to your specific system. Typical universal remotes require you to look through a tiny print list of manufacturer codes and then stare at blinking lights. (Was that a long blink or a short blink?) With the Harmony remotes, you use a Web-based tool to enter the model numbers of the devices you want to control; the software picks the right codes. Configuration is as easy as it can be for a complicated task like this.

The Harmony Touch is the newer of the two remotes. It’s smaller and has a gesture control system. It also does away with the numeric keypad. But the Harmony 900 supports RF control, which allows you to control devices hidden away in a cabinet. The Harmony Touch retails for $250, the 900 for $350.

TiVo

Earlier this year, I named the TiVo the most disruptive product in television. I debated whether to include TiVo in this guide because there are so many ways I can think of to improve the user experience. But that doesn’t change the fact that TiVo is the best way to watch TV today. (And infinitely better than the torture that Comcast inflicts on its customers through its DVRs.)

TiVo does what it always has: It lets you timeshift television and watch it on your own terms. And it does it really well. But it also does so much more. You can watch Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu Plus. Recent changes also make it possible for you to watch Comcast’s on-demand videos and pay-per-view. (TiVo also lets you access music and photo services such as Pandora and Picasa, but those features are poorly implemented.)  My favorite TiVo feature is the universal search, which allows you to search across your video sources. You can enter the name of a show and quickly see where it’s available across Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Xfinity video-on-demand, and live TV. Combine universal search with TiVo’s brilliant iPad app, and you can pull up a grid of every episode of that show. Click on a show and a provider, and TiVo takes you to the right place in the service’s menus to start watching.

The biggest knock against TiVo is unfortunately one that it has little control over: For it work with your cable service, you need a CableCARD. It took a month of dealing with Comcast incompetence to get my CableCARD set up correctly. The cheapest TiVo Premiere DVR is $150, and service is $15/month, but the company frequently runs specials.

iPad mini

The iPad mini is the best tablet out there — even better than the newest iPad. (Disclosure: I own Apple stock — and Google stock.) No, it doesn’t have the Retina display, but it’s small size and lightness more than makes up for it. It beats low-end Android tablets like the Kindles and Google Nexus 7 based on the breadth of tablet-optimized applications and its elegant build.

There’s not much more to say about the iPad mini. If you’re looking for a great tablet, buy this one — if you can find one in stock. If not, an IOU for an iPad mini is a much better gift than an inferior tablet. The iPad mini ranges from $329 to $659, depending on the configuration. I recommend at least the 32GB model.

Panasonic DMP-BDT 220 Blu-ray player

Despite all of the talk of video streaming on demand, the state of copyright law and video licensing means much of the most compelling content is only available on plastic discs. This means you probably need a Blu-ray player in your entertainment system.

This player will play your plastic discs but also connect you with online streaming services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and YouTube with its built-in Wi-Fi networking. It can also play content from SD cards and media servers on your home network. Setup was surprisingly painless. You can control the Blu-ray player through iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. The apps even include a virtual shuttle control that movie fans will appreciate.

The Blu-ray player is the cheapest of the bunch at $99.

These products are pricier than many of their competitors. But they should pay for themselves if you detest frustration as much as I do.

As for assembling that bike you bought your daughter for Christmas? I suggest searching for YouTube videos.

Rocky Agrawal is an analyst focused on the intersection of local, social and mobile. He is a principal analyst at reDesign mobile. Previously, he launched local and mobile products for Microsoft and AOL. He blogs at http://blog.agrawals.org; and tweets at @rakeshlobster.

This is well after the results are known to people who check the news online or read their Twitter stream.

I agree with a lot of the complaints. It’s 2012. The world is networked thanks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He was even featured in the opening ceremonies. (If, like the NBC commentators introducing him, you don’t know who that is, check out Wikipedia.) We know what happens as soon as it happens. Many of us have computers at our desks and can watch live streaming coverage any time of day. Some people care about obscure “sports” like dressage and handball.

But, to put it in terms that Silicon Valley understands, we’re edge cases.

We’re not like most of the people in this country.

Regular people:

• Have jobs where the boss would be pretty pissed off if you sat at your computer in the middle of the day and watched sports. (Many people even have jobs where they don’t sit in front of computers and can’t access Facebook or Twitter!)
• Don’t have friends all over the world who are tweeting up-to-the-minute sports results.
• Pay for cable and satellite. It’s a cheap form of entertainment. A month’s cable or satellite bill is cheaper than taking a family of four to a baseball game or a concert. The vast majority of American households pay for TV.
• Want to watch American athletes.
• Don’t know what sports they should watch and are happy to have someone curate for them.
• Want the sappy features that tell the backstory of the downtrodden athlete who came from a broken home and walked uphill both ways to train.

That is the audience that NBC is catering to. For them, NBC is doing a pretty damn good job.

Now, this doesn’t fit my style of viewing. I hate the sappy features. I TiVo the nightly Olympics broadcast and fast forward through all of the commercials, featurettes, interludes while waiting for scores and sappy features. I’ve nicknamed my TiVo’s fast forward button “Bob Costas,” because I hit it every time I see his face. I can watch five hours of Olympics programming in about two hours. If I happen to hit the live mark, I flip over to Netflix and watch an episode of Breaking Bad until there’s enough Olympics in the queue that there’s stuff for me to skip over.

But, again, I’m an edge case. Most people don’t have a TiVo, Apple TV, and Roku box. (And almost no one has the Nexus Q.)

Could NBC do better? Absolutely. But television is a complex business with a lot of mouths to feed. There are local affiliates, content producers, the networks, and cable and satellite providers. And the advertisers want to get their money’s worth.

Sports programming in particular has some especially big mouths, starting with the International Olympic Committee. NBC paid $2.2 billion for the rights to broadcast the 2010 and 2012 games to the IOC. That’s more than Google paid for YouTube. And that doesn’t include the substantial production costs. It’s not uncommon to broadcast major sporting events at a loss because the exposure can be used to promote the network’s other programming.

Comparisons to other countries are foolish. Many countries have state-subsidized television. In the United Kingdom, the BBC gets substantial revenues from a television licensing fee paid by consumers at a rate set by the government. The BBC also pays substantially less for broadcast rights to the IOC.

Change of the sort that Silicon Valley wants in the television business is going to take 10 to 20 years. TiVo was introduced in 1999. 13 years later, only about 43% of households in the U.S. have DVRs. (And most of them aren’t actually TiVos.) More households have VCRs than DVRs.

Even though many of us don’t believe in the linear programming model, it still matters. Just ask Conan O’Brien. If linear programming were dead, he’d still be on NBC.

Sports fans already have access to way more Olympic coverage than ever before. Instead of one network, NBC is offering coverage on multiple networks. And it is making thousands of hours of content available through online streaming for people who prove they have a pay-TV subscription.

Like many product managers throughout Silicon Valley, NBC has to make the best product for the greatest number of people.

Some fixes are within NBC’s control. For starters, get Bob Costas to stop being an arrogant ass during the parade of nations or when talking about foreign athletes. (If someone like him were to describe Americans on a foreign network, our athletes would be introduced, “Here come the Americans. They’re known for shooting each other for no reason and starting wars just because.”)

NBC should also learn that once something is out on the Internet, it’s hard to undo it. Reporter Guy Adams posted the email address of NBC’s Olympics president Gary Zenkel on Twitter. He encouraged people upset about NBC’s coverage to email Zenkel at Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com. NBC complained to Twitter and Twitter suspended his account.

Clearly, NBC is unfamiliar with the Barbara Streisand effect. They should look it up. Possibly using that thing that Berners-Lee created.

[Top image c/o NBC Olympics website]