For the past couple of days I noticed that I can no longer back out of the Channels app on both my Shield TV devices with the back button. I have to double press the home button to bring up the list of apps and close it out that way. It may have started after the update prior to the update I had for the app last night.
We made a change in the latest build based on feedback in Add prompt to exit app
You can click home to leave the app. Double clicking is not required.
We might change this back, or add a setting for it. I assume you want back to be able to back out of the app?
I really wish you hadn't done that 
I don't mean to be a jerk about it, but, what next? An "Are you sure (Y/N)" when somebody wants to back out of a channel?
ETA: Using "Home" to back out of the app means you then have to cursor-around the Home page to get back to the apps. This all means more button-presses.
I don't like this either. MrMC and SPMC have a display that says to press back again to minimize, and that would be a better way; you have to press back twice. Right now there's no way to exit except figuring out which button I mapped home to on my Harmony remote.
edit to add: is also not like this is needed since when playing something the back button stops it playing so there's no reason to keep you locked in the app.
I would prefer back to just exit the app.
I am sort of in the same boat as @timstephens24 - I couldn't figure out which button I mapped to home on my Harmony remote. The only way I could exit was to long press the Menu button. I need to open my harmony app to figure out where I mapped home to. It's just a function I guess I never use in other apps.
Obviously I'm in favor of this behavior ... and biased because I placed the feature request. However, I understand this behavior is not for everyone and would totally be in favor of having it a setting that could be enabled for those who would want it. Also, I agree there should be a way to exit - whether a exit option in the side menu or a prompt to verify if you want to exit the app (or not). This behavior not uncommon in similar apps, such as Hulu, DirectvNow, and Nexflix apps.
In my case, I almost always have the Channels DVR app running both downstairs and upstairs and found it is too easy to close the app when accidentally hitting the back button too many times.
As a side comment, I'm using the app on FireTV v 2.0.12 and I'm not seeing this behavior. I assume I've not received the update as of yet.
Yes, and it annoys the bejesus out of both my wife and I every time we go to exit Netflix.
Basically one of the main reasons I hate my Shield because all the apps make it too hard to just exit out to the home screen.
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I'm also having this issue, and since it seems to be intentional I'm going to cast my vote against it. No other common Android TV apps work this way. The ones that ask for a confirmation to exit are annoying, but at least it's obvious what is happening. This just seems broken.
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Agree with others, there really should be an easy way to exit the app.
My preference would be options to either leave as before (normal back to exit), confirm exit on back, or no back to exit but an exit option at bottom of left menu
I do frequently accidentally exit app so do appreciate value of making it optionally less easy to do.
It's problem for me as well, since I use a Harmony remote linked to the shield as a keyboard. No home button (as far as I have figured out) which means I actually have to turn the shield on and off to exit Channels. Not a good feature. Maybe make it a configuration "use back button to exit"? Or at least add an exit menu item like Netflix does.
This will be reverted back to the previous behavior in the next beta build. It wasn't actually supposed to go out to the beta- we were testing it on the alpha builds to see if it made sense. Sorry for all the trouble.
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