Channels Sudden Price?

Any future people reading this thread, please disregard it. Explination below:

Since I am still getting replies on this thread. I wanted to apologize about the confusion and seeming insensitive to the efforts of the developers of this project. They and the community have been very responsive and helpful. Both the Apple TV and Android TV versions have been amazing, and whenever there HAS been bugs, the devs are very active here on the community. I have happily paid for both and the developers here have already explained the pricing situation thoroughly.


I am all for supporting developers but I am confused. I have installed the Channels App on Android TV before but now it is wanting me to pay $25? I am a little confused since I had installed this before without this issue?

Again, I am all for paying for an app but when the App is charging you the same price as Apple TV’s but hardly includes most of the features. I am a bit concerned. Not to mention suddenly requiring the price when I have used the app before feels not very good.

Again. I am all for supporting developers but the price seems quite high if it doesn’t include most of the features the same App on Apple’s platform has and the sudden charging is confusing.

I’ll happily pay the amount for the App. But I would like an explanation as to what it was I was using before, if it wasn’t this.

I believe that the previous version you had installed was a pre-release unsupported experimental alpha that was meant as a proof of concept. Not something that can be charged for.

The current version is the production version (with full support) and continuing evolution. There is also the ability to use “pre-release” features for the production version by opting into the beta program for the latest version. This version is probably charged for to recoup support and development time.

The current version may not be the same as the ATV version yet regarding features… but they are working towards that. (The ATV version had over a year head start to fine tune things)

Yes, I believe you’re referring to the experimental app which was developed last summer: NEW: Android TV app for Channels DVR (experimental)

That version only worked with Channels DVR, and was meant as a proof-of-concept. It is no longer being developed, but if you still have it on your device it should continue to work.

The new Channels for Android TV app available on the Play Store is a full-fledged HDHomeRun client and can talk directly to your tuners. It was developed from scratch with a lot of blood sweat and tears, and has a similar feature offering, similar UI and similar user-experience to our flagship Apple TV app. This includes, for example, tuner management, tuner priority, channel management, channel scanning, multi-tuner support, channel re-ordering, etc, etc.

The original Channels app on tvOS was introduced in late Nov of 2015. It was first introduced as a Live
TV app with possibilities of integration with SDDVR. After several months the price was pegged at current USD 24.99. Many considered it expensive at the time, but it offered capability of utilizing one (or more) tuners for ALL of one’s Apple TV 4 clients, throughout the house.

Despite the developer’s quick response to requests and improvements, SD lagged behind. Finally, in April 2016 these two developer’s finally had to make some hard decisions and decided to split from SD to develop their own independent solution.

For users of Channel’s app looking forward to the progressing integration with SD, this was a huge shock and disappointment. Channel’s integration to this point was already far ahead of the SD solution. However, the two man Channel’s team had great vision. They wanted to institute the greatest Live TV and DVR solution imaginable. They perservered with their dream and released an alpha version of Channel’s DVR in Sep 2016, on a web UI. They spent the next three months perfecting and then released a beta version in early January 2017.

Since then, they have improved the concept tremendously so that we now have a iOS, tvOS and web ui solution which is leaps and bounds ahead of any other solution in the marketplace.

Recently, after an extended test for Android user acceptance and useability they have released an Android TV app similar to the tvOS app…albeit without all of the functionality of the current tvOS app. However, combined with web ui it is still miles ahead of the original tvOS app.

Knowing the capabilities and dedication of these two developers (been on board since inception) I’m confident; 1. They would not undertake the project unless they were positive that they could accomplish the same results on Android and 2. Implementation will be lightning fast.

We only have 1 Android client, however, I immediately purchased the new Android app (essentially same cost as initial tvOS app). Just the Live TV viewing capabilities (buffer, ffd, rew) will be well worth the amortized cost over the next few years. DVR capabilities (playback limited for now) are the icing on the cake…once all DVR functions are added, I’ll be over the moon.

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Nicely represented!