ENCAPSULATING THE appeal of the soon-to-be released Simple.TV (a network tuner box that can be used to record as well as distribute Freeview programmes),Mark Ely CEO and founder of US company Simple.TV told Wotsat:“The way our service works – which is diff erent from most DVRs – is rather than just having a standalone box that you control with the remote,this is really a video capture source
and a server”.

It connects to your router/home network via Ethernet and has two tuners that can be used to record two high-defi  nition or standard-defi nition channels at the same time by adding a USB drive (support for NAS drives is in the offi ng).
It can also be used to distribute live and recorded TV serving fi ve  diff erent connected devices at once including via the internet while  out of the home. Users can timeshift,schedule recordings and download them to certain devices.
A 14-day EPG for Freeview channels with metadata provided by Gracenote can be used for scheduling recordings.
As well as watching on PCs and Macs with a web browser, you can watch on iOS (iPad and iPhone) or Android(phones and tablets) devices with a Simple.TV app installed, Roku streamersusing a Simple.TV channel and Apple TV.
Support for Google’s Chromecast is promised with plans to accommodate Amazon Fire TV and potentially smart TVs (Ely hopes the service could  one day beintegrated into TVs) in the future.

Cloud-based
Streaming outside of the home,downloading and automatic series recording will require a ‘Premier Service’subscription, with pricing  that is expected to cost £2.99/month.
A possibly subscription-based,cloud-based storage option for recordings “is something we’re looking at in the next 12 months,” says European sales and marketing director David Burton.
Due for release this summer, the price of the box is yet to be confi rmed (“anywhere between £99 and £149, we don’t know exactly where it’s going to wind up” says Ely). There are also plans to release a satellite version at some point in the near future.