Greetings, We live away from our home six months out of the year, we have a HOMERUN and Plex set up on a Qnap 251 NAS.
I was not happy with the remote playback on Live TV or recorded shows.
Will Channels DVR better for us?
How would recordings be managed remotely?
Would I be able to watch recorded shows on my iPad, Apple TV or Amazon fire stick?
I’m a long time Plex user who ditched Plex DVR for Channels DVR. It’s night and day. Where Plex DVR was constantly failing and needing attention, Channels just works. The Channels app on my iPad and iPhone has worked flawlessly. Scheduling, checking passes, watching DVR’d or live content etc. The only ding I have against Channels is the slow expansion to other platforms for clients (Roku). The nice thing is that you can add the Channels DVR folders (Movies and TV) to your Plex libraries and use the Plex clients for watching DVR’d content. And I’ve got Channels DVR and Plex both running on a 2014 Mac Mini as the server.
P.S. And Channels has a grid guide that works too! 
P.P.S. Oh, and I forgot how well the commercial detection of Channels DVR works! Really nice.
Wow. Glowing review. So if I am away from home, have an Apple TV with channels, am I able to watch my tuner at home? And recorded shows? Or just remotely on an iPad and then throw to the Apple TV?
There two apps, one for iOS and one for tvOS. You’d need to buy them separately, but they both let you watch your recordings or live tv.
I can’t speak to your exact situation - but we’ve got one that is pretty parallel.
A good friend of ours is a typical millennial - big on streaming apps, etc. But for the occasion when she needs to watch something live, she’s out of luck. We set her up with an AppleTV and the Channels app. She was able to log in the remote DVR, and it’s seamless. Heck, even tuner sharing works if we’re watching the same thing.
I’ve got it set up on my iPad and iPhone and again - it’s seamless. It’s the identical interface as when I’m home, and from a user perspective, there’s no difference.
My one suggestion, if you’re going to be gone for six months without access to your server, is to set it to reboot daily at like 3:00 am. A reboot will solve many server related issues and to have it automatically happen is preventative.
I also have Plex and Channels. Plex is AWESOME for managing your movies and other media. The UI is beautiful, and I love the Netflix-like experience. But when it comes to DVR and live TV, my experience is that it is mediocre at best. It works. Sometimes. Often it doesn’t. And if you are using it to stream to Apple devices, it has to transcode which slows the time it takes to start watching a stream.
Channels, on the other hand, is AMAZING for DVR and live TV. I have used it on Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad, and they all work perfectly. Even remote streaming is great (assuming you have the bandwidth). The UI is great, and the video begins to play almost immediately.
You can schedule, change, and delete recordings remotely right through the app no matter where you are. You should be able to watch on any of the platforms you listed.
And lastly, you’ll find that Channels support is great. They respond to emails and community forum posts, generally within a few hours. If you need help from someone at Plex, don’t hold your breath!
Enjoy!
good idea to do the daily reboot of my NAS.