DVR State of the Union - July 2016

Yep, all spit and no polish at the moment. Looks to work ok on a touch screen device but needs a massive clean up for TVOS as it’ll be a nightmare to navigate. However, from what I understand Apple have put certain restrictions in place/requested certain standards for TVOS apps meaning they meet a minimal level of navigation and accessibility standards, so there is hope. Plus the Kodi add-on is a massive bonus as that covers almost everything except for iOS and TVOS.
I’ve been promised a beta invite, so will let you know how it goes when I’m onboard. But from other people’s feedback, they look to be on the ball. Shame as I had my heart set on Channels as the over all product was very aesthetically pleasing and simple to use.

Yep me too, wanted channels to come through they were the reason I bought a HD home run and signed up for Silicon dust DVR :money_mouth_face:

That’s why I’m a little pissed I thought we were all in for the ride :pensive:

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Regarding international support:

  1. We’ve never said that we wouldn’t build an international DVR. What we’re saying is that we will be working on US/Canada support first.

  2. 92% of the responses to our DVR survey were from USA/Canada users, so it makes sense for us to start there. We can only do one thing at a time, and there’s a ton of work involved in building a full DVR system from scratch. We have to prioritize and spend our time wisely.

  3. It is significantly easier for us to build features for the USA, because we have ready access to US HDHomeRuns and to ATSC streams. Building features for International markets is much harder and more time consuming- we have to write all the code “blind” because we don’t have DVB hardware to test with, nor do we have access to DVB streams or EIT data.

  4. After months of looking, we have been unable to find a rich guide data source for International customers. Licenses for guide data are prohibitively expensive, and require a separate contract/negotiation/payment for each country involved.

  5. Without rich guide data (i.e. images), the best we can do is build a DVR on top of the EIT data available in the DVB stream. This is and has always been part of the plan. But without images, we’ll have to rethink many parts of our UI. That just adds to the already lengthy list of things we need to do before launch, especially when you consider that we can’t even fully test international-specific changes on our own DVR setups.

  6. Given all this we drafted the roadmap above, and in the spirit of transparency we shared it with all of you. Our plan is to get everything working for USA and Canada first (i.e. ourselves and most of our customers). Then we’ll come back to do a second-pass where we add DVB support. When this will happen depends on how well the Alpha and Beta go- if there’s no major bugs/issues found during the Beta and things are working well, we’ll start working on EIT support. But if there’s lots left to do, we won’t get to DVB support until after version 1.0 is launched.

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Thank you guys for clearing that up, I for one think you are a great team and was a little disappointed as your product is way and above the best on Apple TV.

Im sure it goes without saying that if you need a hand when your are ready to look at the UK market setting up a VPN to one of our setups etc you will have the support needed to give you the data.

Thanks :kissing_heart:

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Absolutely. I look forward to helping out.

as with so many others here, I would love to help out and offer my beta testing capabilities (I have participated in several beta programs for various video software packages (edit, compression, switching, and even a tivo beta tester. over the last 10 years)

The guide data you currently get for Finland is horrible. Your co-developer already stated, that you are not willing to change the provider of the data, so that forces me to unfortunately leave this project.

How can Schedules Direct get good data source from Gracenote and you get the bad one?

What NAS devices are going to be supported? I was thinking of buying one soon and would like to buy one that’s compatible with new dvr.

We’re not ready to announce anything like that right now. Initially the DVR server will run on macOS and Linux and then we’ll be ready to work on porting it to run on specific NAS devices.

Ok thanks. I was reading the state of the dvr blog and you mentioned that the dvr beta will be available in the fall. If so, how much is it going to be and will I have to buy the official version again in the winter. Keep up the good work. Love the channels app. Btw. Your app for atv is keeping me from switching to an invidia shield.

when Channels DVR gets ported to selected NAS devices will someone be able to use Channels DVR without a Mac computer? having to buy a Mac computer is a price point too far for me.

Totally. Cheap solutions are totally the plan. Though running it on beefier hardware will get you different features.

thanks for the reply. a refreshing contrast from the other company.

I don’t mind spending a little more money on a NAS with the appropriate capabilities. I just can’t see buying a Mac computer just to operate a dvr.

I haven’t been a tester for you at all, but would love the opportunity to become one for the alpha testing.

I have an Mac, so i can help with testing the combination Mac an atv with dvb

I’m completely set up with a Mac and I have multiple HD Homerun Extends to test with. I happen to live between two cities and I get excellent signal out of one city and okay signal out of the other, meaning I have duplicates of all the major and minor networks but one set is better than the other. This has been a problem for me with the SD DVR as it will record lower tuner channels over the other better channel and I have no choice on which channel it picks to record from… I have had to turn one of the cities off in the my.hdhomerun.com settings page (major pain in the butt when I want to watch a game on the other cities networks.) I will happily Alpha test or Beta test for you guys as I have a unique set of obstacles with my programming. I have been using the Channels app since it came out on the ATV4 and have loved it since I started using it! As for the guide data, I know that it is not elegant but could you allow for people to provide their own data with a Schedules Direct account?

I have an HDHomerun PRIME and two Apple TV gen 4. I have an all Mac household but was hoping to use a Synology NAS, but if the initial version is for MacOS I might get a Mac Mini instead.

Then why not also support Windows 10

You are correct that it is a remote desktop. I have not found it to be laggy at all and I’m using an AC network.