Agreed!
What can we do to make that dream a reality?
Convince the content providers to start offering streaming video. Then you either pay them directly for the content or you pay a Multi Service Operator(ex 4com.com, Comcast) a monthly fee to access the content. The way IPTV works you connect to the streaming server via set top box on your TV. You pick a channel and it starts to stream to your TV. Currently you have what is called muticasting, which means 200 digital channels are being shoved done a line to your house and you tune into the channel you want to watch. This eats up a lot bandwidth. IPTV you would be doing unicasting which means only one channel is being sent down the line. This saves tons of bandwidth that can be used for other things.
IPTV has the potential to lower the start up cost of starting your own TV station by a large margin. You would just need the software to encode the content into a MPEG4 packet and store it on a streaming server. Then get a big enough internet connection for people to access the server.