One of my Cord Cutting goals has always been to make our TV viewing experience streamlined and simple. As a nerd, I personally have no problem with fumbling through this and that just to get something to work. But that gets annoying after a while. Aside from that, my wife (the most non-nerd person I know) just wants things to simply work. And honestly, I can’t blame her.

   After I got our Roku boxes set up, my search began for a channel that would allow live TV streaming. Sure – it’s simple to switch from HDMI to TV and vise-versa, but I couldn’t help but think about how awesome it would be if all viewing could be done from the Roku alone. In my opinion, that’s one advantage the cable and satellite providers have: you use 1 box, and simply change channels.

   There are several options out there and I believe this market will continue to grow. The first option I came across was the much talked about Aereo.  As it wasn’t initially available where I live, I waited (somewhat) patiently for it to arrive. When it did, it unfortunately wasn’t the experience I had hoped it would be.

   Another option I tried out was NimbleTV. However, Nimble TV isn’t as much live TV streaming as it is quite simply a satellite service provider. In fact, upon signing up for the service, you will receive an email from Nimble TV telling you to expect an account letter from Dish (which I did) that they tell you to simply ignore. On top of that, Nimble TV’s lowest priced plan is $29.99. There is a free plan, but the channel offerings are lack-luster to say the least. My Spidey Senses immediately began to tingle – if I’m going to pay at least 30 bucks a month for a service that’s merely streaming satellite television, why wouldn’t I just pay for satellite television?

   This week, I decided to give simple.tv a try. I had seen it before while searching other options, but for some reason I kept saying to myself, “I’ll get back to that one.” I have to say, I’m glad I did. Simply put, I literally saved the best for last.

   Quite frankly, what the folks at Simple have done is nothing short of genius. As there is no way to directly connect your over-the-air HD antenna to your Roku, simple.tv provides the “bridge” to make it possible. And to add extra icing to the awesome cake, simple.tv gives you DVR functionality by having you connect
an external hard drive. And this is the full DVR functionality you expect from cable and satellite – you can pause, rewind, fast forward, schedule recordings of upcoming shows, or an entire series of shows.

  ALL from the simple.tv Roku channel, the Android app, or the IOS app! Or, if you don’t happen to have your mobile device handy at the time, you can always simply schedule your recordings from the simple.tv website. Not only can you schedule shows from the apps or the website, you can watch YOUR shows as well – either your recordings or live TV being picked up by your HD antenna. Like I said, nothing short of genius!

   As I wanted to tread lightly to give it a test drive, I picked up the 1st generation simple.tv unit (pictured above and left). It’s a single tuner unit, meaning that if anyone else wants to tune in while I’m watching, they either have to watch what I’m watching or they will change the channel and interrupt my viewing. This really isn’t a big deal in my house though – we all tend to watch the same things at the same time. Simple.tv has since partnered with SilliconDust to offer the dual tuner pictured below.

The Cons:

   The biggest negative I experienced was the initial setup. Simple.tv isn’t necessarily “out of the box” ready, which is understandable. It of course has to scan for and set your available channels. Also, if you decide to give it a try, be warned about the external hard drive you connect – simple.tv will completely format it upon setup. You may want to purchase a new one to dedicate to the unit, or if you’re a nerd like me, use an extra one that you may happen to have lying around (I happened to have a 500GB Western Digital in my hardware closet). I’m not 100% sure why formatting is necessary, but at least you are given a warning about it during setup. Overall, the setup time was extremely long. Granted, part of the extra time I experienced could be attributed to the fact I’m running the 1st generation unit that had to download an update, but I felt the drive formatting and channel scanning process were a bit excessive time-wise.

   Requiring Microsoft Siverlight for desktop viewing is also a bit of a con, especially for us Chromebook owners.

Another thing that may be considered a “con” to some is the channel load time. I personally understand that this type of streaming requires a little patience, but you channel surfing types may be a bit turned off by the “Please wait while we tune into channel ___” screen. Simple.tv does a great job explaining this in the owner’s manual that comes with the unit as well.

The Verdict:

  Overall, from a Cord Cutting perspective, I give simple.tv a solid 5 out of 5 stars. I’ve only seen one slight hiccup in which the live shows that simple.tv was displaying were at one point almost 15 minutes behind what was actually being aired live. And when I changed the channel, then went back to the original broadcast made it start over. I emailed support and got an almost immediate response – another one for the “pros” column. However, a simple reboot of the unit appears to have cleared up that issue.

   If you’re looking for a simple solution that lets you watch live TV through your Roku, mobile devices, and computers, I highly recommend simple.tv!

 One of the first things I thought about when I first Cut The Cord was, “it would be awesome if there was a Roku channel for live, over-the-air channels.” After all, you can pick up many HD channels (many with better display quality than if you were to view them via cable or satellite) with an inexpensive antenna. How cool would it be if you could keep everything centralized, with everything available through your Roku, without having to flip back and forth? Sure – it’s really not that big of an issue: on our family room television, we simply select “HDMI1” for all things Roku, and then “TV” for over-the-air broadcasts.

   As is the case whenever I have such a curiosity, I began to scourer the inter-webs looking for said awesomeness. My first thought was to simply look for Roku channels created by individual local stations. Some stations do have their own Roku channels, but the vast majority of those channels only carry the station’s news broadcasts due to licensing constraints. And that’s when I stumbled across a news story about something called Aereo that was causing a legal stir in New York.

   Without going into the complete history of it all as that’s not the purpose of this post, long story short is that the cable giants and networks have been fighting Aereo in an attempt to shut them down but thus far they have been unable to. Why? Because of the simple genius behind Aereo. As you may know, you can buy a simple antenna and hook it up to your TV and pick up free broadcast HD channels (some older TV sets will require you to buy a low-priced HD converter box). The genius behind Aereo is that they house your “antenna” for you. They do this with “Antenna Farms” that are simple, tiny antenna on circuit board arrays.

   

   One of the most important and fulfilling things I’ve cherished all of my life is the gift of learning. I literally love to learn. A philosophy I live by and hope to pass on to my children and all those I meet is simply this –

“Never stop learning!”

   Regardless of anything I may even be considered an expert at, I know that I can always learn more about it and actively look for more. Fewer things in life are more exciting to me than discovery and learning. In all that I love, I look for more ways to learn more. Have I stressed learning’s significance enough?

   In steps Coursera. Coursera is a for-profit educational technology company offering Massive Open Online Courses (MOCC’s) funded by computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University.  They partner with top universities and organizations worldwide, offering courses online for anyone to take for free! The heart of the Coursera mission statement reads:

“We envision a future where everyone has access to a world-class education. We aim to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities
they live in.”

 Both Facebook and Google Plus have given us reviews of our past activity. Google Plus was first with it’s Year In Review offering, with Facebook following suit with a bit more vast review of your entire Facebook experience. Twitter recently joined in (somewhat) by giving us the ability to see our first tweets.

   Day by day on the Google home screen we get “today in history” lessons from their Doodles – some cool, some funny, and some are actually interactive games. Wouldn’t it be cool if you had a way to see the same type of “today in history”, but have it be about you?

   Now you can with a cool little app called Timehop! Timehop brings together your posts and photos from Facebook (Facebook is required to log in at the moment), Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare from 1, 2, 3 and 4 years ago today. It also displays pictures that are stored on your device from the corresponding day, provided you still have them on your device. Thus, every day you get your very own ‘today in history” about yourself! Also, at the very bottom of your daily display, Timehop also provides you with a Google-type “today in history” (for example – at the time of this post, Timehop is informing me that 15 years ago today, the first season of Futurama begins airing on Fox).

   As is possible with any app, Timehop isn’t without it’s own share of hiccups at the moment. For example, some users have reported issues with the Twitter log in, although I had no issue with it. However, I have noticed that although I’m logged into Instagram it has yet to show me any of my historical posts from there. I’m not sure if it’s just coincidental, in that I may simply not have posted anything on Instagram on any of the past 2 days that I’ve been running the app.

   I wouldn’t necessarily categorize Timehop as a “Must Have App”, but it is a pretty cool app worth checking out!

Timehop is available for Android via Google Play, and in the App Store on iTunes for Apple devices.

   Some say that copying is the best form of flattery. You know you’ve done something really well when others try to be like you. However, I don’t think this is true in the case of application development.

   If we look at some of the powerhouse success stories like Facebook and Twitter as guidelines, and the countless other social media wannabes that have come and gone that have tried to copy them, it’s easy to see that in the tech world, copying is often a sad and pointless endeavor. Simply put – there is already a Facebook and a Twitter, and there will never be another social media outlet that will see the same successes they’ve enjoyed.

  True – there is my current personal choice, Google Plus, which has grown and continues to grow. But in all honesty, this can be attributed to the fact that it was created by an already established, thriving company – Google. But as for a from-nothing, ground zero start up social media site? Again, there will never be another such as Facebook or Twitter.

  A little while ago, the world was graced with a wildly successful and equally annoying little bird that flew threw Mario Brothers type pipes. There were many videos, jokes and postings. And then, its creator killed it. What has followed in subsequent weeks has been nothing short of pathetic in my opinion. When I visit the Play Store (which I do daily) I find countless Flappy Bird copy cats. With goofy names and often different main characters, these rip offs are nothing more than cheap copy cats. Are these being developed just for laughs? Just to have some sort of goofy fun? Maybe. But, even the joke has worn out long ago.

  Enough already.

  If you are a developer, or currently striving to become one, do us all a favor –