Q&A: Simple.TV CEO Mark Ely

We recently chatted with Mark Ely, CEO of Simple.TV about the company’s new service and DVR technology. The CA-based startup makes IP-based DVRs that connect to users’ home networks and allow streaming of live and recorder video content across platforms. Tell us about the new service? The newest feature is the one we introduced this week. Simple.TV now allows users to set up shared accounts on their DVR with up to five family members. Once a user is logged into their Simple.TV account, access can be granted to any user regardless of whether or not they have an existing account or hardware with Simple.TV. The recipient receives an email to accept the invitation, quickly creates an account and then has access to the recorded content on the DVR. We’ve also rolled out new versions of our iOS and Android apps that incorporate a more traditional EPG grid for easily seeing what’s on and what is coming up. What are the similarities and differences between Simply.TV and Aereo, whose over-the-air service has been ruled unlawful? While Simple.TV and Aereo shared a similar mission—putting great broadcast TV on connected devices—our approach was very different. Rather than centrally capture TV and redistribute it, Simple.TV puts the TV capture point in the consumer’s home. Our box acts as a bridge between broadcast TV and connected screens, giving our customers the ability to seamlessly watch live or recorded content using our apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Desktop, Roku and Chromecast, as well as PCs and Mac. The latest generation dual-tuner Simple.TV box not only bridges the gap between over-the-top content and broadcast TV, but with its cloud architecture, it enables the whole family to access TV, regardless of where they are physically located or what device they have. What’s your target market? Our target market is the TV enthusiast, who has really embraced online streaming. Generally, they are streaming media enthusiasts who are using Roku boxes, Apple TV and Chromecast to watch online video services, but want to access their favorite live TV content on their connected devices in a way that they otherwise can’t. From a technology standpoint, what’s the biggest challenge when it comes to DVR service? We’re really approaching the DVR in a whole new way. Traditional DVRs capture TV onto hard drives and then play the video back to the TV set directly. It’s really a way to delay and control a single video stream. With Simple.TV, we’ve built a video server. It’s a very powerful box that creates streaming video out of a linear broadcast source. In a way, it’s the same technology that’s used behind the scenes at Netflix or Hulu, but running in your home.