I just tested Plex Live TV. To be honest, Plex Live TV implementation is very disappointing. Channels App allows you to stream directly from HDHomerun, and switching channel in Channels app is quite fast and responsive. For Plex TV, it looks like the stream goes to my Plex Media Server in my NAS first, then from NAS Plex Media Server to my Plex app on my phone. I verified that in my “Signal GH” app. That means it takes a long time for a stream to show up on my phone. My NAS is a quad core 3Ghz, I still have to wait for 4 seconds before video shows up on my phone. And if I switch to other channel (from CBS to NBC), it will take another 4 seconds. To me, Channel App is a much cleaner and faster implementation. I don’t understand why Plex would make the media server to be the middleman. Perhaps, they want to allow to watch Live TV and record simultaneously. That’s my guess right now.
@rog889 - The development path is kind of the opposite, Media Server -> DVR -> Live TV, whereas channels started with Live TV. The Plex approach seems to just be the one that requires the least amount of new code.
The Channels ATV beta uses the DVR to send the live streams too. It needs to do this for the tuner sharing beta feature to work. But it is very fast and responsive and switching channels is rapid… if there is any difference, it is imperceptible. If Plex is indeed much more sluggish, It must be that Plex is doing some other kind of processing with the stream on the DVR before it sends it to the clients.
Yes, Plex DVR is transcoding to iOS-supported formats, so it’s always going to be slower. Since Channels built its own video player for the ATV, it doesn’t need to transcode and can stream the video through the DVR server in its native format and still be very fast.
Plex DVR is hugely disappointing, and I don’t see it getting any better. In fact, I’m thinking of scrapping Plex altogether and going with Infuse for my film/TV collection, and of course keeping Channels for my DVR.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Plex tv / dvr is not in its final form. It will get very competitive very quickly.
Channels is getting better much more quickly than Plex DVR is
stoli412, I use Channels for Live TV/DVR and Infuse for my film/TV collection and am happy with the combination. I find both simple to install and maintain from a hardware and software perspective. They both provide family friendly interfaces that are similar across iOS and TvOS are fairly stable, perform well and are relatively bug free. Other options were dropped, most often because I thought they were too complicated for the non-technical members of the family. BTW Infuse will play most formats including HEVC and provides a nice interface complete with metadata.
My goal was to find a wife acceptable way to view all of our live and stored media using the AppleTV as single input. We’ve fairly happy with our combination of Channels, Infuse, Netflix and Directv Now. However, I am still looking for a music solution. I’ve ripped all our CDs to flac files and moved them to the NAS that contains my Movie and TV files but I am still looking for a good app to play them from AppleTV. I’ve tried several and currently using MrMC. It works but not the simple clean solution I’m looking for. There is talk that Infuse will add music support but no timetable at this point.
Plex DVR just came out yesterday
It sounds like we are similar. except i dont keep much in the way of files at home. I moved my music to OneDrive, shared that folder tree with my family and we airplay to the entertainment system.
yeah, but theyve been working on it for a while. they were willing to push it out in that condition. thats on them.
This is true
Plex Live offers some features that Channels doesn’t have, and vice versa. They are similarly priced, although Channels is $3 more. But many people feel that the Channels interface and support is worth more than the extra $3.
But for $5, if I had not already found my Channels DVR solution, I would have tried Plex Live out. I tried a lot of things out when I was looking for a good TV solution. And ultimately decided that I preferred Channels. I would like to see a real Plex Live user review, which don’t seem to exist currently. I did, however, see a comment that the Plex Live interface does not offer a grid guide and does not yet work on ATV.
I originally balked at the $8 price tag back when it was announced. When the Plex DVR support was announced I revisited the Channels DVR in comparison. I ended up going with Channels and have been amazed. I pay the $8 / mo. just because of the insane support level that the devs offer on the forum. That and channels works way better on my Synology than Plex ever has.
I have not visited using Channels Remotely in a while so things nay have changed. But I think the difference is that you have to use the WEB UI instead of the tvOS/iOS Apps with Channels. I would prefer using the Apple TV App (or iPAD App) Remotely then use my Laptop or iPad Safari. With PLEX you use the PLEX App on whatever device it supports. Of course currently Live TV is only supported on iOS and Android TV and not on the Apple TV (yet). But you can play DVR Recordings from either the PLEX DVR or the Channels DVR.
For a number of reasons I prefer Channels over PLEX. However, I do use PLEX for other content like ripped Movies and TV Shows.
I have PLEX PASS and setup the DVR and will play with the Live TV but again Channels is much better on the local network. If Channels Apps (tvOS and iOS) worked remotely via the DVR (which is like PLEX) and they also supported other content they did not create (like ripped content) then it would have more use for me. But then it would be much like PLEX in that regard. My biggest problem with PLEX is that it requires Transcoding of MPEG2 files and I expect because of this the channel switching will be way to slow for me.
Devs had said iOS is coming. Although web-ui does work great and covers most devices, I can understand that it is slightly more complicated for some users/family members to bookmark a URL.
As far as connecting the ATV to remote DVR servers, this is only really a benefit for people who frequently travel with their ATV (to hotels with good high-bandwidth internet connections). Or for people who are trying to give away their DVR access to a third party. Channels would need to allow separate user accounts for this to work well… kind of how netflix does it with multiple sub-accounts.
@djcastaldo
Or people with a second home. Or people that visit relatives (like the in-laws) where you have limited access to the shows you like to watch. For those times I use my various OTT Streaming Services (Netflix, Hulu etc) and things like PLEX.
Granted, I really do not do this that often and I really would not use Channels that often anyway but my point was since I can not use it on the Apple TV I simply would never use it remotely. But this is really just my use case.
But since we were comparing Channels to PLEX I simply mentioned it because with PLEX you can use the PLEX App on the Apple TV Remotely at least for the DVR at this time.
No time shifting on Plex – not at all on par with Channels, so doesn’t “shame them” with the price.
One thing to take away from the Plex Live TV / DVR update is the support for additional tuners from different manufactures, which is something I would hope might come to the Channels DVR. Really could do with DVB-S support, esp. with SD dragging their feet
Apps are free if you pay 8 a month fyi