Back in the TiVo days, I used the multi-room DVR sharing heavily. This would allow:
- Channels to understand there were other Channels DVRs on the local sub-net and on the same account.
- Allow some sort of browsing and playback of the content in some authenticated way (ssh psk? idk). Not sure what you'd really need to require.
- Maybe this could even be handled in just the Channels player client without changing anything on the DVR side?
I used the heck out of this feature in the TiVo days as it allowed my family members to load up their DVRs with their content, which is often nothing anyone else would watch) and do their own thing - fill up and manage their own device. But it still allowed the other to view something the other would have on any other "player" in any other room.
This also keeps the DVR hardware device cost down as you don't need a powerful machine with TBs of storage to support a family, you can use a much less expensive box if it is typically supporting a single family member and they can easily browse other boxes for different content.
The other benefit is a sort of household high-availability, if one of the ChannelsDVRs croaked or wasn't visible, the others were there. Yeah, it happened in the TiVo world and with Channels too - unpredictable things happen in a household.
I understand you guys have a thing to avoid sharing across users outside the home, but TiVo figured it out at least I think they did. Maybe Channels can figure out something similar without individual user accounts and sharing locally across DVRs
I would sure like to see some relatively seamless way to do this locally.