Is there a reasonably-priced NAS that people recommend?
I like my QNAP (HS-251+). Woot has a 4-bay from QNAP today that has similar specs:
http://computers.woot.com/offers/qnap-ts-453mini-4-bay?ref=cp_gh_cp_3_d_ph
4-bay would be nice (mine is only a 2-bay)ā¦ price is pretty good.
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@dajspi Those apps all use Appleās built in video player. That video player does in fact respond to those buttons. tvOS apps do not actually have the ability to do that though. Weāve opened radars with Apple regarding this in the past.
Iām a Harmony user as well and I agree itās super frustrating.
I have a question for you though. Have you added an āApple TVā device to your Harmony remote since the Apple TV 4 has been released? Or are you just using the old āApple TVā profile you had already programmed before the Apple TV 4 came out?
The reason I ask is that, Iāve recently reset my Harmony Hub and I canāt get it to utilize the skip buttons anymore. Iāve tried both the new āApple TVā profile and the āApple TV 2/3ā one. Neither of them allow the skip buttons to work like the old original āApple TVā profile. It really sucks because now I donāt have my 10s skip anymore in other apps.
Itās a bargain if youāre using cable cards (except it doesnāt support DRM). But Iām guessing most of us arenāt. So paying just for DVR of OTA only seems like a bit much.
Ditto.
Iām an OTA user looking to record the NFL, 60 minutes, and maybe jimmy fallon late night. I have been looking forward to this for a while as a cord cutter. Iām happy to pay a lifetime membership but I cut the cord to avoid monthly fees (as I assume most cord cutters do). Please consider this type of offer to you users. Tablo has a lifetime offer which i might have to consider but I really do enjoy your product.
Iād too prefer a lifetime or even yearly option to the subscription.
Iāve been a Tablo user and I can tell you from my experience that using Channels and even the alpha DVR are leaps and bounds better than Tablo. To be frank, the Tablo hardware and software are both about as unstable as can be for a released product. And, each new version of their software brings new and exciting ways for both the hardware and software to break. Their releases are infrequent and they often blame the user / environment for the more than obvious bugs in their solution. On top of all of that access to the device is restricted such that you are completely at their mercy and slow support to resolve issues.
Bottom line, stick with Channels. The product, even as alpha/beta, is the best out there (Iāve tried many) and their responsiveness to problems is top notch. You wonāt be disappointed!
Like a few other people here Iāve been following development of the DVR software, but Iām only a light OTA TV watcher. I just canāt justify $96 per year for Channels. I understand the need for a recurring fee to cover ongoing development costs and the channel guide, but I think you need some way of reducing the price or having tiers of service. I could see paying $60 per year, but not more than that.
Channels does offer a tiered service in that the OTA app which offers time shifting capabilities like pause, rewind, ffwd is available for a single fee per OS (ATV/iOS). It is the DVR capabilities that will come at $8/month charge. I know some of this cost is to cover the extended guide data that is needed for full blown DVR capabilities. Itās up to the Channels team how many tiers make sense for a small company from an implementation and management perspective but I understand them wanting to limit options (especially early on).
For light OTA users the $8/month may not make sense. In addition to the monthly fee you also need to factor in the hardware requirements of a NAS, Mac or Linux machine and disk space space to store recordings. Maybe the Channels App and timeshifting is enough for light users. In my house, where OTA is now a primary means of television service, the DVR is a reasonable cost vs our previous $120/month DTV bill.
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hi snow66.
regarding the DVR, since you are a beta tester, are you able to pinpoint where the recording will be saved in your NAS [or PC if thatās what you have]? whatās the size of a recording for 1 hour? is it a separate app or in the channels app, thereās gonna be a record button? another interface to view the records [listings of recordings]?
thanks.
krblgc
hi snow66.
regarding the DVR, since you are a beta tester, are you able to pinpoint where the recording will be saved in your NAS [or PC if thatās what you have]? whatās the size of a recording for 1 hour? is it a separate app or in the channels app, thereās gonna be a record button? another interface to view the records [listings of recordings]?
krblgc,
I was part of the Alpha and Channels is preparing for Beta so they allowed the Alpha folks the option sign up early. It sounds like there will be a new beta of the TV Channels released early January when the Beta stage officially opens. So my answers will be about the alpha versions.
The DVR app uses a MacOS, Linux or certain NAS devices as a server and is separate for the Channels app. There are configuration options for the DVR server including where the recordings will be stored.
According to the Channels guys 1 hr of HD video will be around 8Gig. I use the HDHomeRun Extend to transcode to h264 prior to recording so I use about 1/2 that space using the āHeavyā transcoding setting.
As for viewing your recordings, they can be viewed from the server, thru a browser on a local networked device or thru an alpha version of the TVOS Channels App. If the TVOS channels app sees a DVR server, it displays a RECORDINGS option on the main menu (to the right of āON NOWā and āGUIDEā). Also when selecting a show on the Guide you are given the option to record that show. The Channels team is adding additional functionality to the TVOS app and will eventually add DVR integration to the iOS app as well. The DVR integration to the Channels App is seamless and is much better then other options Iāve tried.
Note that all of this is discussing an beta/alpha version that has not been released yet, so the devs @tmm1 or @maddox are hard at work and can make vast improvements and tweaks as well for the final version on the work in progressā¦ But to add to this, as it is now, the files are stored in the native format that the tuner outputs the file in (mpeg/mp4/etc). The DVR engine does the transcoding/conversion to HLS if needed for ATV and other devices. The files are named in a Plex compatible naming format so that the whole recordings folder can easily be shared via plex if one wishes to do soā¦
I just want to be sure Iām not missing anything. But it looks like this product (Syncology DS216J) should work with the Channels DVR. Correct?
That is an older model with an ARM processor. I would recommend you get something with an Intel CPU.
Will the Channels DVR run on a Windows 10 computer?
The Public Beta will launch with support for Linux, macOS and FreeBSD computers and NAS only.
Maybe on the new Linux subsystem in Win10? It would be worth the lolz to try.
Ok will there be a Windows version in the future?
Depends on the interest and feasibility. We donāt have a lot of experience with windows development, and it seems running other solutions on windows is quite cumbersome (firewall exceptions, loopback drivers, etc).
At the moment we rely on a lot of Unix features to make the DVR work. It should be possible to run the DVR server in a linux container on windows 10, but no one has tried that yet. We hope to document how to do that during the beta period.