Simple.TV update

[silvarios]

Kind of neat, but not fully baked. That's the short version. I won't go into an exhaustive review now, but I did want to flesh out a few specific points.

The Roku 2 XS and XD seem to work fine when it comes to viewing live (assuming the OTA antenna and tuner are working properly) and recorded content. Tested with channel version 1.2 on the Roku 2 models. Verison 1.2 of the Roku channel should add channel labels back to the Live TV list. I appreciate the list of shows in alphabetical order by show name, and don't necessarily need the list to revert to the old channel numerical order, but knowing the channel of the show before clicking play seems like a nice compromise. In contrast, channel 1.1 on the Roku DVP is slow to initially load the channel and unstable thereafter. My DVP will eventually lock up to the point of needing a reboot when viewing Simple.TV content. No Channel 1.2 update yet for the older Roku models. As such, I would classify the channel as virtually unusable on the oldest Roku models. I did try downgrading to version 1.0, which was laggy overall, but seemed less prone to locking up the whole box. Still not ideal.

I have not done much testing with setting recordings from the Roku box, other than the occasional manual record selection of the show. Hopefully that works well enough, but the interface for selecting upcoming shows seems much more limited on the Roku channel than the web interface.

Since I mentioned web interface, it is likely worth noting the web interface requires actual Internet access, it is not strictly a web view over the LAN. Also pay attention to the little status icon in the upper right corner of the web interface (or the settings menu on the Roku app). I was able to somehow connect remotely to the Simple.TV, instead of over the LAN when viewing live TV and recorded content. Reloading the web interface a couple times finally kicked me back over to the LAN for content viewing. To clarify, yes, viewing content (and other interactions) via the website requires an Internet connection to load the Simple.TV site, but access to the actual content should be over the LAN, any bugs aside, unless you are truly accessing the Simple.TV from outside the LAN.

[silvarios]

Testing more on the Roku DVP. Simple.TV 1.0 works pretty well actually. Older versions of the app are available as private channels which is pretty sweet. While the setup isn't perfect, recorded and live TV shows are playing without the whole players freezing. So far anyway... Also, the start up time is much faster than 1.1.

Okay, the Simple.TV is starting to grow on me after a day of testing. There is one oddity I just haven't figured out yet. Start time of shows on Qubo (testing recording on shows my daughter might want to watch and unfortunately, WETA kids isn't tuning properly, hence Qubo) seems to be wonky. Like the Simple.TV box "clock" is slightly slow. According to my network synced clocks on other devices, the shows are beginning at the proper time, but if I don't bump the buffer to start four minutes early, the show isn't recording properly. Not sure how the Simple.TV clock works since there doesn't seem to be an outward facing setting. In fact, I don't even see the current time listed anywhere in the web app.

[silvarios]

To clarify:
My original post on MacResource
Product page

My model is the current single tuner network DVR that ties into a web interface, Roku app, and iOS app. There is talk of an upcoming Android app and new dual tuner hardware.

Interesting concept, that still needs some work.

[Chakravartin]

Using the web app exclusively.

I've had an alert pop up once that my Mac was connecting over the Internet and would not get the ideal performance that connecting on the LAN would... as mentioned, a reload fixed that.

I had to let quite a few unfamiliar items past LittleSnitch and NoScript... Had to hack the latest Firefox in about:config to allow insecure cross-domain content to load before it would work with Firefox.

I'm a little miffed that I can't set a simple timer-record function. Have to schedule it by show. Might miss some new shows that way.

I'd like to have more granular control over show-priority when there are conflicts.

Can't set a static IP??

Weak tuner. Had to mess with my antenna quite a bit to get the full channel lineup to show and there are several channels that come in choppy on the Simple.TV that are flawless on my TV.

Needs a beefier CPU or more RAM or more optimized OS or web service or... something. The thing stalls when I try to do almost anything while recording and it takes way too long to load the images in the "My Shows" page.

Silverlight sucks. Consumes too much memory and CPU. HTML5 is available when streaming live tv, but not when streaming recorded shows. WTF??

Needs quick-loading list-views for viewing/organizing recorded content.

Needs fine controls for skipping commercials.

Needs a bookmarking feature for resuming where I stopped watching a show.

The device seems to go to sleep and it's slow to wake. Takes a long time to show anything but the guide when I haven't accessed it for awhile.

Needs an iPhone app. (Haven't tried the iPad app yet.)

Will probably discover many more annoyances over the next few days.

Still... interesting. With a few lifestyle adjustments it could replace my other PVR and being able to watch tv from almost anywhere is something that I look forward to trying.