also, an annual discounted rate maybe appealing as well. how about $60 annual, so its kind of similar to SD’s DVR plan.
So I’m curious about what format the recordings will be in. I’d like the option to export them elsewhere, or to do something like point Plex at the recordings folder for Channels (if it turns out I like the Channels DVR better than the Plex one,which so far it sounds like I will, but decide I still want to use Plex for my viewing). Will the DVR be trans-coding recordings to send to the ATV or will it trans-code and store them in an H.264 format (I presume if I have my newer HDHR do the trans-coding to start with it’ll just store them that way, but what about my older HDHR which doesn’t trans-code?).
I’m also very curious about the commercial detection. What options will we have on that end? Can we set it to just mark them as like chapter markers so we can skip them as we’re watching instead of having them automatically skipped (which I always prefer due to false positives). Will we be able to go in and manually readjust those marks if we want to?
$8/month does seem reasonable, though slightly higher than I’d prefer, but I’ll give it a try for a few months before judging. I totally agree with the above though that I’d love the option for an annual subscription (ideally at a slight discount but even at the exact same price I might prefer to pay that way).
I know a lot of this will be answered when we get to the beta but I’m very excited and curious! Can’t wait for next month! (and as I said before this can’t get here soon enough. EyeTV is falling apart on me!).
I have the alpha on an Early 2009 mini 2GHz core2 duo, 4GB RAM. Runs Plex at the same time, no issues .
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thanks, I figured that might be the case, but I thought I should check since it said 1/2/3TB may not work.
I looked at the WD web site and I could not find where they mention what processor is in the NAS.
if this model will work ok for everything else with commercial detection turned off, I may use it to try it out before buying a new NAS.
NAS specs on 2/3/4/6/8 tb single bay My Cloud indicates “up” to 1ghz processor. However, specs don’t specify ram. IIRC, SD specified 256MB of ram which was available on 2/3/4 tb single bays. Doubt that the 6/8 tb models are any different, otherwise WD would indicate a difference. As Channels requires min 1ghz and 512 RAM, I would conclude that any single bay WD My Cloud is NOT capable of running Channels DVR.
However, the WD single bay(s) are acceptable to use for data storage, resulting in recording files being available on a network share, if desired. Personally, as the Plex Server has to transcode all mpeg-2 recordings prior to transmission to each individual client, I would use the Channels DVR App to view recordings/live TV, as each ATV4 will perform the required transcoding.
$8 isn’t terrible, but for anyone who is using Channels for OTA only and not a larger set of channels, it feels like a little much. I would like to suggest that you consider a slightly lower monthly amount, as well as discounted yearly and lifetime options. As an example, Tablo has the following options:
$5 per month
$50 per year
$150 lifetime
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8 bucks a month seems steep to me as I currently pay for EyeTV which is $20/year. Or I can do Plex for less per year or pony up for a lifetime subscription. I’m a bit bummed as Channels is my go to Apple TV app and I wanted to use the DVR when it arrives. It seems like it will be the most expensive option out there.
Can a dedicated Raspberry Pi be used as the NAS?
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Yes, the web UI works great and is fully mobile-optimized. There is a built-in transcoder for watching live TV via the web, and it can be used while you’re away-from-home as well. Our transcoder is also able to take advantage of Intel QuickSync for hardware-acceleration.
Everything is US/Canada only for now. During the beta we will start looking into DVB support.
Correct. I know TiVo and cable companies charge per TV, but Channels DVR will be a single monthly fee.
The single-drive WD models have a 600mhz processor. It’s very underpowered which is why they don’t even advertise its speeds.
Perhaps. The software will run on a RPI, but we haven’t done much testing with it. One limitation of the RPI is that the ethernet and USB share the same bus, which makes it tricky since the DVR needs to download data off the network and store it to the USB drive at the same time.
I feel like $8 a month is right on. I subscribe to the commercial free hulu for $11 a month and this will presumably replace that. I just bought a qnap ts231+ so its sounds like this will work (assuming it works with arm)! Its a 1.2Ghz dual core processor with 1GB of memory. My guess is that this will churn pretty hard on the CPU since I doubt it has hardware enhanced transcoding abilities. Either way, I cant wait to see this!
Glad to hear the DVR is coming out in a month. I can wait.
Not glad about the price. I truly appreciate your work and have been loving the Channels app but if there is no lifetime option, I really think the price should be lowered to $5/mo.
For commercial detection, excuse my lack of comprehension but, does annotate mean that recorded content will have commercials automatically removed or will something like chapter points be used to skip around them after you press a button?
Also curious to find out what format recorded shows are stored in. (h.264 MKV?)
Exactly this.
The recordings are in the raw format coming from the tuner. Either mpeg2 or h264 (depending on the channel, or if transcoding is enabled on the EXTEND) in a ts container.
There is no export option, but the file and directory names are carefully chosen to be Plex compatible so you can easily add the DVR’s recordings folder to your library.
There is no transcoding required to play back recordings in Channels. We stream the raw data and decode it on the device, just like with live tv.
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would QNAP TS-253A be supported? any recommendation regarding this QNAP versus the Synology DS216+ii
Sounds good! As long as the files are reasonably standard and can be moved around manually (or I can just point Plex or whatever at the folder they’re in) that’s more than good enough for me! Looking forward to it. I’m also interested in and looking forward to seeing how your commercial detection works. I used a commercial detection script with EyeTV for a while but had mixed results and eventually removed it. If it works well though that’ll probably be enough to make the $8/month price worth it over other options.
One last question, I’m glad to see you’ll be marking commercials via chapter markers, will you support using the “skip forward” button on third party remotes? My wife and I use our Harmony Remote almost exclusively and on the 3rd Gen ATV we could use a long press on the FF button to skip forward to the next chapter. I haven’t run into any apps on the new AppleTV that listen for the skip forward signal but it evidently still exists as a signal that can be sent to ATV’s. It’d be really great to have a one button skip forward option for chapters.
Anyway, can’t wait for January and the opportunity to get my hands on the program and give it a good run through!
Unfortunately, tvOS apps can’t respond to those buttons. I’m with you in the disappointment. Apple thinks having 4 buttons on a remote makes things “simple”, but I say it complicates things in that we’re limited in functionality 
How about AMD CPU based NAS? I have a quad-core AMD CPU NAS with 16 GB RAM - TS-563. The CPU cores are at 2.1 GHz. I don’t think there’s hardware transcoding in this QNAP model as this NAS has no GPU.
What is the hardware encoding requirement for since the content is not converted from MPEG2 to H.264, and Apple TV4 can stream both in MPEG2 and in H.264?
I could understand the requirement for hardware encoding if you were re-encoding from MPEG2 to H.264 on the NAS to save on storage space.
Thanks.
The following doesn’t address the specific question… I have been playing with PSVue and the siri remote allows 10sec skip ahead/behind if you press on the far right or left side of the swipe pad. Pressing in the middle of the pad pauses the video.
I’m with you on this. I love the Channels ATV app and bought the iOS version just to support the developers (haven’t really ever used it). I only get the normal networks OTA and typically only use them to watch sports and local news.
DVR is definitely not a necessity for me, but I would have paid a reasonable up front fee to have it on my Synology NAS. I didn’t realize it was going to be subscription based. Unfortunately, I’m unlikely to subscribe at this point.
EyeTV worked fine for me for years on an old Mac mini without a subscription (relied on OTA for the guide). I would, however, likely pay for a lifetime subscription assuming it is somewhat discounted.
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Sure, that will work great. AMD cpus are Intel compatible so our software doesn’t know or care about the difference.
Hardware encoding is not a requirement, simply a nice to have. It unlocks some optional additional features like away from home streaming. We are also able to fallback to software encoding which is not as fast but still works.
That model has intel cpus and plenty of RAM so it should work well.
I would have to agree. I think the cost is perfectly reasonable but for me ongoing monthly is still not worth it for me. I only get local channels OTA pretty much entirely for sports here and there and being able to buffer 90mins in the current app is awesome and allows some timeshifiting and commercial skipping already. I simply wouldn’t use DVR enough to justify it even though it would be an added convenience. I also still have a 2009 mini with EyeTV that I can in a pinch use to record and playback in other apps (I wonder if Channels will gain local file playback regardless of DVR?). For me a DVR would have to replace Hulu to make sense and I simply dont get enough content OTA to match Hulu. And frankly OTA is still stuck at crappy MPEG2 that is a macroblock fest with motion and stations put huge labels and banner ads all over their content that isnt really an issue with Hulu. So for me I think no on the DVR but Channels is a great app.