Is there any better way to ring in 2012 than to drop 129 bills on a shiny new wireless-enabled traffic light season 1 burner? Absolutely. But if your New Year’s resolution includes archiving smartphone pics to optical media and steaming DVD flicks over WiFi, Samsung is prepared to make those nostalgic dreams a reality, with its  Hub.

The premise here is quite familiar — little black box takes content from an attached storage device and streams it to connected devices over WiFi, or over the Web. Samsung’s twist on the traditional model brings optical media into the equation, however, with a  two and a half men dvd set burner enabling music and movie playback, along with remote file archival. You’ll need to wait until late January (or perhaps early February) before introducing Samsung’s shiny streamer to your wired or wireless network, but we got an early look at the new DLNA-enabled gadget today.If you’ve used an external DVD burner made in the last decade, you’re already familiar with the form-factor employed here — there’s a slim disk tray up front, with full-size and mini USB connectors, Ethernet and a DC input on the rear.

This is strictly a streaming device, so there’s no HDMI or other AV connectivity — you’ll need to use an Android, iOS or smart TV app, along with Samsung AllShare or an FTP client to access content Mad Men Seasons 1-4 DVD Box set. We tried steaming 720p video and a few photos using the Android app and the AllShare application included with most recent Samsung devices, and everything worked as expected, with content loading quickly without any hiccups.