Plex just released their Live TV and DVR capability. At $5/mo Plex offers a full media center solution and shames Channels $8/mo. Plex also offers discounted annual and lifetime subs, free (no addl. charge) mobile apps, etc… I’ll be trying that out.
I’ve found that the interface with plex isn’t as simple as channels. But that could just be me. I’m not sure how plex handles multiple HDHR’s either.
Also, $8/m is nothing to be ashamed about. Cable companies and other solutions are at least $20 and some over $40.
I would be interested to hear about the Plex DVR. How does the live TV guide work? If I have two extends with different preferred channels, does it know to use the correct HDHR? Can I browse to see whats on my favorite channels while the current show is playing? Does it work on Apple TV?
I agree Channels is better than any cable offering.
But for a new cord-cutter who just bought an HDHR which is more enticing?
Channels: Live TV, Guide and DVR. $40 for TV and mobile apps + $96/year in fees
Plex: Full media center for all your movies, shows, photos, music, home videos, Live TV, DVR with free TV and mobile apps all for $40/year.
To me, Plex seems the most compelling.
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Try it and write a review. I have tried Plex several times over the years and it never worked properly for me.
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In my case, my Apple TV is my media center. I use netflix occasionally. My photos and music are stored in the cloud. I just want to get broadcast channels from my HDHRs on my ATV. And record them too, with a slick interface. I am pretty obsessed with Channels right now, but I might try out Plex Live in the future. I haven’t seen any real feedback of the Plex live interface though.
As far as a DVR solution, Plex isn’t even in the same ballpark as channels. My review of the Plex DVR was “total garbage”.
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Id do channels dvd for a lifetime of 100-150 but I am not into subscriptions. Have you guys considered a lifetime buyout? I always did that with my tivos and it would make me a happy camper.
Playing around with Plex today, it has issues with multiple tuners, but recorded fine as long as I didn’t do more than three (I have 8 total tuners, but it would error trying to record anything over three). The live TV integration just plain sucks. Still love it for all my ripped movies, but live TV/DVR I’ll be sticking with Channels. Once iOS integration comes around, and then being able to use that to watch things out of the house, I’ll have Channels for TV and Plex for Movies.
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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
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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.
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