Gadgetory

hey I'm Matthew Muscovy ak from Cena and we're here with simple TV you remember simple TV from CES 2012 where the product NAVSEA nuts best of CES Award in the home theater category and now it's finally shipping for a hundred and fifty dollars escort simple TV is a DVR for recording free over-the-air TV signals although it's quite not like any other DVR you may have seen it's just a small white box and when you turn it around you'll notice there's no HDMI output on the back that's because simple TV is designed to stream to compatible devices on your network which includes Roku boxes an iPad or even a standard web browser you can also access your content outside your network giving you the Slingbox style ability to tune into live TV and recorded programs from anywhere you can get an internet connection to get the simple TV box working you actually need to provide some of your own hardware including a hard drive for storage and an antenna for receiving over-the-air TV signals simple TV also requires a wired Ethernet connection the box doesn't have built-in Wi-Fi so you need to find a place where you can connect both an antenna and an Ethernet cable setup is pretty simple and once you get it working you can set up season pass recordings and browse the electronic program guide just like you would on a normal DVR the iPad and browser interface is really pretty slick including artwork and program descriptions now the roku channel has a more basic user interface but it's good enough for accessing shows in your living room again though it's worth pointing out simple tvs limitations you only get basic Network TV channels so there's no cable channels like ESPN Comedy Central HBO or Showtime also simple TV only has single tuner capability so you can't record two shows at once or watch live TV while it's recording another show now because simple TV sends all its video signals over your Hjelm network it needs to use some compression and that affects image quality if you've got a sharp eye you're gonna notice the image softness right away but for a lot of shows it actually looks pretty good where I did notice the difference a lot was on programs with fast moving action Sports NFL games really suffered from simple TVs compression making it especially hard to track the ball on long passing place and simple TV is it nearly as responsive as a typical DVR when you're fast-forwarding or skipping through content the image and the background actually stays paused so you don't have any idea where you're about to stop you just have to guess really the best thing simple TV has going for it is its low total cost of ownership even when you include its $5 per month premiere subscription option that you really need to access its best features the best competing over there DVR is the TiVo premiere and while the hardware only cost one hundred and fifty dollars TiVo's $15 monthly fee adds up fast total cost of ownership for a TiVo is three hundred and thirty dollars for one year while simple TV is only two hundred and if you look at lifetime subscription options TiVo's total cost is six hundred and fifty compared to just three hundred for a simple TV so sure simple TV isn't as good as TiVo but it is much cheaper and that pretty much sums up the simple TV experience it has a lot of limitations compared to a traditional DVR and the experience is it nearly as good but it does offer significant savings which will definitely appeal to the court cutter crowd simple TV still feels like an early adopter only product but if you're looking to save money and can put up with its limitations it's worth checking out I'm Matthew moscovia and this is simple TV