Channels DVR is Now Available in a Public Beta

There’s no information on International support yet.

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Well …darn. I bought a My Book 12 TB RAID, installed Plex (on PC), got a RW Bluray, got an ATV4, got an HDHomerun Prime, had cable card installed, bought the Channels app, and it works great …only to dig deeper and find out the DVR beta currently isn’t available for Windows. Checking into the VM option, but will need to upgrade to WIN 10 Pro (at a minimum), and not sure my PC supports Hyper-V just yet. Bleh… :wink: Contemplating shipping back my My Book and sucking up the extra money to get a Synology or My Cloud RAID.

Punted briefly and tried out the Plex DVR, but it’s not the integration I was looking for.

Curious, any more targeted date for availability of the DVR capability native to Windows Home Edition?

You can use VirtualBox for free on any windows machine to run the VM.

No ETA on native windows support at this time.

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A post was split to a new topic: DVR tab not showing up

Do you really need a full 14 days guide data for scheduled/key word recording though? IceTV has local guide data in Australia, whatever source channels is using though seems good. Hopefully they enable it shortly!

A post was split to a new topic: Pricing question

Sounds amazing, but am I reading this right that I’m out of luck with the older HDHomeRun Dual? Is it because of DLNA support? Guess it’s time to start saving up.

Actually older units are now fully supported. See HDHomeRun DUAL support (legacy tuners)

Outstanding. I’m going to sign up to give it a try tonight.

What happened on the Apple TV store yesterday 3-4-2017. Channels has been removed and it will not work on AppleTV any longer.

Is there any announcement list that one can sign up to for specific announcement of Channels DVR and international availability?

I live in Canada and my wife and I love the Channels app. To be able and expand to DVR capability has been something that I was very hopeful of and am now excited to read about (only found out because of the Apple issue with installing the latest update to Channels).

go to this thread - read through it – request a beta – works!

The DVR is already available in Canada

This is good news! I’ve had the Channels app on my ATV4 for quite some time now and like it. Have been wanting a full-fledged DVR solution for a long time. I used to use the Plex DVR beta for a while but got seriously burned out on all the constant fiddling around that was necessary to keep it working somewhat smoothly.

With that said, can you provide any insight into the ultimate end-game for Channels DVR? Is the goal for Channels DVR to be super easy to use and user friendly even for novices? Or will there always be some degree of technical know-how needed to set up and operate the function? I’m very technically-minded myself and usually have no problems with tinkering around with software, hardware, settings, etc. to make something work the way I’d like it to work. However, I’m very quickly getting to the point where I’m just sick and tired of tinkering. I want something that simply works. And by works, I mean I want my wife and kids to easily be able to use the DVR function without having to know anything about the “back-end” functionality.

I guess my underlying questions is: Is Channels DVR ultimately meant to be plug-and-play friendly for the masses? Can I expect to be able to plug a NAS into my network, enable the DVR subscription in Channels, and Channels will take care of everything behind the scenes? For example, will it automatically find all available storage devices on the network and allow you to pick which device you want to use? Will it then automatically download, install, and configure the NAS for use with Channels DVR? Will my family then be able to use Channels DVR just as we used to use our cable company’s DVR solution or Tivo?

This is exactly our goal. This is what the goal of Channels has always been, especially DVR. While there may always be a certain level of knowledge needed to set things up, like installing an app on a NAS, the idea is that all of that part happens up front, and after that, the application is really easy to use. So even if your father doesn’t know how to set up the backend with a NAS, you should be able to spend 5 mins setting it up for them and they’ll be good to go from then on out.

In fact, it mostly works like that right now.

If you have the hardware to use it, you should give it a try for a month. You can cancel anytime you want. The most you’ll be out is 8 bucks. And if there’s something you weren’t happy about and decide to cancel, we’d love the feedback!

Is there a possibility that once this goes live there will be a lifetime or yearly pricing model? I hate seeing monthly payments and like to just give a lump sum. Plex Pass, Tablo and TiVo all spoiled me with offering that option. I love what you guys are doing but I’m really trying to stick to my cord cutter mindset

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How is progress going on getting DVR support and guide data in Australia?

( Would really like to see some progress as the DVR capability has been available for almost 5 months in “beta” )

See International DVR

For the unRAID plugin, is there a way to add a option to where we want the dvr data to be stored?
It currently sets it to

/mnt/user/channels-dvr/data

The DVR settings and guide data are stored in that location. There is currently no way to change this.

During setup you can select where your recordings should be saved. Your settings are also regularly backed up into your recordings path.