CES 2012: Simple.TV Gets Its Launch

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Now this is a home theater advancement we can all get behind. The folks out at Simple.TV have put out a DVR system that not only records content, but can also get it to your various portable devices, and on top of it all, offer something in the way of scalable storage capability.

On the surface, Simple.TV is a lot like a lot of other DVR systems. You’ll be able to watch your various content, as well as pause and record live television, but you’ll also get a built-in TV tuner that lets you take all that stuff on broadcast television, cable included, and convert it to MPEG-4 format. This process allows your content to be easily moved over to iPads and iPhones, a service which has been fought for hotly by cable providers mostly by their assorted networks, but now they’ve been largely beaten to the punch by a good old fashioned hardware end run around the system.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. The Simple.TV system does not have an HDMI output, which means you pretty much won’t be plugging it into your television directly. Nor does it offer internal storage. It looks to offer up a standard cable jack instead, and also boasts a USB input, which suggests that you’ll be able to put in your choice of a networking dongle or external storage. It will also boast a pair of Ethernet jacks, which points out the other thing this is lacking: wireless capability.

But the up shot here is that the Simple.TV system is already working with Roku and Google TV, so it’s a fair bet that there will be lots of content in the offing here that will, in turn, give you the ability to run things through your home network and route them out to other devices, even if it doesn’t always do so in the most convenient of fashions.

It’s set to start selling in spring of this year, which means it’s only a couple months out, and you’ll shell out fully $149 for the system itself as well as a $4.99 monthly subscription fee.

Looks like Simple.TV might have at least the start of something interesting here, but what do you guys think about this one? Figure that this will start a whole new way of life in streaming video? Or will more conventional systems rule the day? No matter what you think, head on down to the comments section and let’s talk Simple.TV!