BETA: Channels on Android TV + Channels DVR

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#1

Ever since we launched Channels for Android TV and Fire TV last week, everyone's been asking "What about DVR?".

The bad news is, building a full-fledged DVR client is a lot of work and it's going to take us time to reimplement all the DVR features we spent the last year adding to Channels for Apple TV and iOS. The good news, however, is that we're not going to make you wait until the DVR features are 100% done.

DVR features for Android TV and Fire TV will be released in multiple phases. Each phase will go through a beta phase to ensure stability before releasing. When we're happy with the results, we'll release those features to the main public release. Then we'll move on to the next phase.

The first phase of the beta focuses on DVR consumption. This includes browsing and playback of your recordings. This means you can now watch your DVR recordings and even skip past commercials by double clicking the Right button on the remote.

You'll still have to use the web admin (or the tvOS or iOS version of Channels) to manage passes and recordings, but at least you can watch your recordings now.

The beta is available to all existing customers of Channels for Android TV. To upgrade to the beta, opt-in on the Play Store: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.getchannels.app

You might be asking, what about Fire TV? The Amazon App Store leaves much to be desired with their beta process. Because of that, we won't be using that version in the beta. But when the features are released publicly, they will be available on the Fire TV version as well.

Check out how it looks

3 Likes
NEW: Android TV app for Channels DVR (experimental)
#2

This is wonderful news! I’ve admittedly been switching back and forth on Channels and Plex on my shield and really miss channels. It’s wonderful to see that development for Android has not been abandoned and that the UI of the seek bar has been changed to be less intrusive, like the Apple TV version. I really hope this is the start of a lot of Android TV and Android mobile development. I’ve loved how responsive you developers are on this community and am happy to see a JUST TV+DVR option for Shield users if we don’t want an “all media encompassing” app like Plex.

#3

This new Android App is a great addition to Channels development. Now, we have a purpose for the Shield that I purchased over a year ago.

Also, impressed that the developers are able to follow the excellent UI layout they developed for Channels iOS/tvOS which will make it easy to switch between platforms for everyone in the household.

Many thanks for the professionalism and dedication to your craft. It absolutely makes Channels the premier choice for Live TV and DVR.

1 Like
#4

Is there a forum to discuss this beta? I don’t see one.

#5

In the #channels-android-tv section is fine.

1 Like
#6

It works great on the NVidia Shield - a much better experience for live TV than SiliconDust’s own app. DVR with commercial marker is the killer feature here, and so I’ve disabled my SD’s DVR in favor of channels (in spite of the price). The only thing not entirely satisfactory is the navigation to find an episode. The tile interface is not good at picking from a long list of episodes, particularly if the episode names are very long (like for the Olympics). Pretty please - please provide a list view for episode in addition to, or instead of tiles.

2 Likes
#7

Is there any way to get an email whenever a new beta update is released? Coming from TestFlight with Apple, I got spoiled by this feature of their program. I did some searching on the web and can’t seem to find any way to accomplish this with Google Play.

#8

Do I have to enable port forwarding for the Channel DVR to work on the Nvidia Shield?

I was running Channels DVR on my Mac mini. I assume that I have to uninstall the DVR on the Mac Mini so that I can use the Shield?

#9

No, port forwarding is only for out-of-home access. If you’re moving the DVR, make sure you disable bonjour on the old computer or run the setup installer again to remove it completely.