Beta testing next Apple TV release

We’re planning a big release of the tvOS app and could use some help testing the changes:

  • NEW: Tuner sharing lets multiple ATVs in the house watch the same channel using only a single tuner!
  • NEW: Watch Again on watched shows will mark all as unwatched and start playing the first episode.
  • IMPROVED: Episodes in a show are now sorted by season.
  • IMPROVED: New More button on Shows for Delete All and Mark All as Watched.
  • FIXED: Local news and other shows would display the same date on all episodes.
  • FIXED: Trying to access a recording from the Top Shelf would sometimes not work.

If you’d like to help test this build, please click here and a TestFlight invite will be sent to your email.

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Sweet… Sharing tuners is working for me!

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Sort by Season! Wonderful news!

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How can we confirm the shared tuner. I don’t see any detail in the log, and the activity screen only shows one client, even though I have two watching same channel… (is that the how???)

Will the shared tuner allow for independent pause forward? Or will they both be playing at the same point (kept concurrent with each other?)

Also noticed that after stopping viewing on the first ATV, the status activity show idle, even thought it is still playing on one of my ATVs.

Hey @tmm1 i see the DVR is now aware of what the ATV app is streaming. Will this new feature eventually allow the DVR to request/steal the turner when it is needed for recording? Also, with the new tuner sharing are the ATVs sharing the stream with one another or the DVR?

Both clients should be listed under Activity…

The only way to confirm is to look at the lights on your HDHR or check its web interface.

Nothing changed in the behavior on the ATV. Works just like before.

Seems like a bug, can you reproduce it every time?

Request/steal is no longer required, because the tuners are shared.

Both. If multiple things are trying to access the same channel, they will all share the same tuner. This includes:

  • watching live tv from one or more ATVs
  • recording one or more jobs on the DVR server
  • streaming live tv to one or browsers using the web UI

How will it work on the prime if I’m streaming 3 different channels to ATVs while the dvr is scheduled to record on a different channel than all 3 ATVs. This might not be the case for most users but it happens often In my environment.

No change in behavior. You’re right in that tuner stealing would still be useful in this scenario. Might be easier to implement now that streaming goes through the DVR, but I haven’t thought about it much. Still tricky to implement as we would likely need to throw up a prompt on one (all?) of the apple TVs to figure out which one to steal.

Will check when I get back home and post.

Okay I see this bug too. Nice catch.

If possible a prompt should display on all clients similar to Netflix and if there is no response from the user then the DVR can stop the client's stream.

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/netflix-culture/media/ar.png

I would also like to mention that I have been using Hdhomeruns for over a decade and channels is definitely the best live/dvr client I have ever used. Keep up the excellent work guys.

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I can’t get shared streams to work. In fact now I can’t tune the same channel on two devices at all. It just says tuner unavailable after a long wait. Tuning a different channel is no problem.

What HDHomeRun model are you using?

What does the Log say?

FIXED: Local news and other shows would display the same date on all episodes.

this solved my issues from before about some foreign shows that does not display season number or episode number but just the original air date. now i can see all episodes marked by their date of showing. thank you very much for implementing this fix. i’m very happy about this :slight_smile:

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I prefer using an antenna app called Signal GH, which can show the tuners and what devices are connected. With the new beta Channels ATV app, the DVR IP takes the tuners, instead of the ATV directly.

This also works perfectly fine using the HDHR status page, its just a bit more cumbersome to see it in real time.

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@tidrion Can you also go to the Settings tab of the Beta app and click Submit Diagnostics at the bottom.

All tested and working as expected, except as Dave noted above.

Could not test last fixed: Top Shelf recordings as I do not have any recordings appearing on Top Shelf (by purposely marking all series not to appear in Up Next). We prefer only seeing favorite Channels on Top Shelf (as it was previously, before the Up Next section was added in)

We especially appreciate the single tuner multi use and the recorded date for news shows.

Excellent additions. Thank you.

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I am not on the beta but I have a couple questions.

You said “now that streaming goes through the DVR

  1. Does this create a lot of overhead on the DVR?
  2. Can you have it both ways where some connect direct and some stream via the DVR?
  3. Does it support transcoding from MPEG2 to MPEG4? Like the Web UI with options?

I can see many opportunities with going trough the DVR for everything. Just worried about the overhead. I currently have a pretty powerful MAC MINI (i7 Quad).

Not sure about the overhead yet… we need more people to test it out and report how well it works (or doesn’t work).

For now we plan to keep this beta-only feature, until we have more confidence that it works well for everyone (including people with lower-powered NAS).

Transcoding is currently not supported, in order to further minimize overhead. The DVR simply copies the raw stream from the tuner and sends it to all ATVs who are viewing the same channel.