Hey everyone! It’s almost the end of Fall and we’ve owed you new State of the Union for a while, so here it goes!
Catch Up
In our last DVR SOTU, we talked about the progress we’d made and the feature set. So, let’s do that again, and MORE!
Public Beta
In our July SOTU we said we’d release our Public Beta in the fall, and we have a week to meet that deadline. The bad news is, we’re not going to meet it. The good news is, the Public Beta will absolutely be fully available to everyone in the second week of January!
The Public Beta is 99% ready to go. We could totally ship it and make it available in a week. But, that would be RIGHT before the holidays. The problem wish shipping right before the holidays, is that we’re either going to have to ignore any and all feedback with the Public Beta, or ignore our families during the holidays. That doesn’t seem fair to either of you. So instead, we’re just going to wrap up development on the Public Beta before the holidays, enjoy them, and then ship the Public Beta after the new year when we’re fresh and ready to go.
Pricing
Pricing for Channels DVR will be $8 per month. There will be no contracts or minimum months required. It is simply month by month. You can unsubscribe at any time you want.
Alpha Update
The Alpha has been progressing well and our Alpha users have had a HUGE impact on development and bug fixes.
We are now up to 25 users in the Alpha. All of them are actively using the software and helping us fix bugs. The DVR server itself is becoming very stable, and a bunch of new backend features have been added in the last few months.
DVR Features
- Auto-Update - Install the DVR software once, and it will always stay up to date with the latest features.
- Team Passes - Search for your favorite team and automatically record all upcoming games.
- Auto-Prune Settings - Keep only the recordings you want by automatically deleting old or watched recordings.
- Tuner and Pass Priority - Pick which tuners get used first, and which shows record when there’s a conflict.
- Commercial Detection - Recordings are automatically post-processed to find and annotate commercial blocks.
- Linux/FreeBSD and NAS Support - Channels DVR now runs on major NAS devices or any linux/freebsd server.
Client Features
As of right now, only the tvOS client will have DVR features. But it’s a full featured DVR client and it’s awesome.
- Browse and watch your recordings
- Recordings are grouped as Shows, Sports, Movies, or Kids
- Up Next tells you which episode you should watch next based on your watching habits.
- Search for things to record and record just a single airing or create a Series or Team pass to record all airings in the future.
- Record a currently playing show or create a Series Pass from it.
- Record a future airing show from the grid guide.
- Real time updates from the server to Channels. Mark a show as watched on one Apple TV and it will instantly be updated on all other Apple TVs.
NAS Support
Enormous strides have been made in NAS support and Channels DVR is running on all of the big ones. It’s really exciting.
Most major devices are now supported by Channels DVR. We provide official app packages for the following NAS systems:
- Synology
- WD MyCloud
- QNAP
- Netgear (ReadyNAS)
- Seagate
- Lacie
- unRAID
- FreeNAS
- Asustor
The minimum requirements for the Channels DVR software is a 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM. Older NAS models and inexpensive units like the single-drive WDMyCloud 1/2/3TB are generally too under-powered to run Channels DVR.
If you’re in the market for a new NAS, we recommend something with a modern Intel CPU. These CPUs have hardware-accelerated video encoders and it is easy to optimize software for them. NAS models like the WD PR4100, QNAP TS-x51+ and Synology DS216+II all use Intel CPUs and offer hardware transcoding.
Wrap Up
So, that’s where we’re at right now. The base of Channels DVR is really strong. We’re really happy with it. General availability for Channels DVR will be available soon! It will launch as a Public Beta. It’s core is strong, but it still needs lots of polish and some other client features (including full iOS support!), but it’s not enough to not let everyrone in on the party!
We’re really excited that it’s come this far and it couldn’t have happened without you all here and especially our Alpha testers.
We’ll post more official information about the Public Beta when it’s ready for everyone to sign up, download, and install it.
Thanks!