Maybe the higher cost smart TVs have slightly better processors and performance, but after 1-2 years most of my smart TVs' built-in apps are borderline unusable because of how slow it is. Clearly the devs have determined that trying to maintain more apps for more platforms isn't worth their time.
If you don't want to buy more Apple TVs because of the high cost, you could go with Android TV-based sticks (Chromecast w/ Google TV, TiVo Stream 4K), or Fire TV Stick 4Ks.
And maybe Channels could do a Free Chromecast/google TV with annual subscription?! That could probably be a successful campaign for new and current subscribers on the fence because of their current system?! Just a thought.
I’m sure anyone in the non US market will feel very left out of that idea, as international shipping wouldn’t be worth it.
Back to the Samsung idea app, I can completely understand why they wouldn’t, I have a Samsung smart TV, and the smart aspect hasn’t been used in years, Netflix last I checked was a sluggish pointless mess, I primarily run Amazon fire sticks now powered by the TVs own USB slots.
I don’t know how more modern smart TVs fair these days, but over the past 6 years, I’ve watched most of the smart premium features disappear from my TV including voice control, social integration and games.
If we are rehashing old threads about future platforms. I may as well join.
I upvote if LG WebOS
Upvote as well for webos
I think adding any additional platforms would be a support nightmare that would only take time away from developing good stuff that benefits everyone. Buy/borrow/steal a supported streamer.
Apparently WebOS has the same limitation as Roku and requires the use of their system video player. (At least, that's the word over at the Silicon Dust forums.) if that's genuinely the case, then it's not going to be possible.
I rescind my vote for other platforms.
Can I just get all features on my android. I invested to heavily in shields to go buy apple.
This is the answer. Many Smart TVs don't even support newer apps.
It's easier to upgrade a $50-$150 box than an entire TV.
Please reconsider creating a native Samsung Tizen App (which I think would be a port of your Android App). Samsung maintains the second highest CTV use in the US while Roku is #1. Samsung has just started licensing Tizen and thus likely to see an increase in Tizen Streaming devices soon.
Roku keeps 50% share of North America CTV market in Q1 2022 (pixalate.com)
This is never going to happen from a team as small as ours. We can’t afford to develop and maintain an app of our size for platforms that routinely sunset their hardware like smart tv manufacturers do.
For anyone that’s reading this, unless you see us announce something, nothing you say in a forum post is going to convince us otherwise. This is our plan, and nothing in the industry has changed to change this for us.
Why don't you guys just buy a Chromecast with Google TV? It starts at $29.90 and it works so great. Every single TV in my house has one.
sarcasm
All I heard is we need to grow Channels DVR member base. So you earn more money and can hire more staff.
@Everyone go buy extra subscriptions you dont need. NOW! 1 subscription isnt enough. Buy 1 per TV.
Also @Everyone_Else go right 69 reviews for channels all giving 5stars. Do it now!
What I heard is that Channels is not going to adapt to a changing market and ultimately go the path of Blockbuster Video, Kodak, and so many more that fail to adapt.
I would like to see Channels grow and expand. This is the best app and OTA service I have used.
All the apps we need are on Tizen except Channels. Many in my household prefer using the native Tizen apps despite having the Apple TV (or some other streamer) to use the Channels App. I am just saying there is a big market for this app on Tizen.
Regarding all of these calls for additional platforms:
In short, Tizen and Roku are crap to develop for. If you truly want to see Channels on those platforms (or others, such as LG's WebOS), then you need to take the initiative to reach out to the development team for API endpoints to develop the clients yourself or pay for someone else to. In short, put your money where your mouth is.
Otherwise, I stand with the developers to limit the clients to Apple and Android.
a $20 dollar wallmart streaming box or a $25 firestick runs channels very well
ask any plex user - great support on two platforms beats crappy support on a dozen
As someone who worked for a video streaming company with lots of clients and currently works for an audio streaming company with lots of device support, I thought I'd just drop in my 2 cents:
Tizen, WebOS, Vizio, Comcast X1, etc all use what we refer to as 'Web TV' which is vastly different than 'Web Desktop' which is what you use on a computer. There's also 'Web Mobile' too, which usually is a subset of desktop with a skin change and optimizations for touch instead of clicking, vs remote w/ TV.
Writing Web TV apps for video is super super annoying. Why? Because the standard web javascript frameworks (think React, Vue, etc) are traditionally too slow to work on 'low powered tvs'.
There's pretty much 4 type of clients for TVs:
tvOS-based ones, which can share code w/ iOS
Android-based ones, which can share code between TV and mobile
Roku, which uses a thing called Brightscript and is pretty awful
And Web-based ones, which have its own unique flavor. If you used channels, you know their current WebUI is not designed to be a '10 ft interface' it's a barebones admin page. Clearly fancy/pretty web frontends aren't their forte.
Say they were to make one. Then you run into TONS of playback issues. For example, ATSC or OTA tv in America (and DVB-S too, IIRC) is all mpeg2 and ac3, neither of which a browser supports. They'd have to then have the server transcode both the audio and video, which adds tons of overhead to the experience, never mind ATSC 3.0 using hevc and ac4, also things that many browsers do not support, forcing a transcode for playback.
The experience on web TV platforms when you dont control the media 100% is hard. If you ever used Live TV w/ Plex on a Web TV platform, you'll see what I mean and thats with a vastly larger dev team.
And also the variations between the TVs is horrendous. Take just WebOS: My 2022, 2021 and 2019 WebOS TVs all run different versions of WebOS, meaning different chrome versions and different experiences since there's no incentive to continue to update appliances like this.
In my own apps I've supported I've submitted countless numbers of weird edge cases that vary across platforms and one of our QA labs had over 20 tvs for testing once, because a bunch of them (Roku, I'm looking at you) don't create dev kits and allow vendors to literally fork the platform, so we were forced to build two walls of TVs. Such a mess. Roku's playback is a black box that you throw packets in and hope the thing you want comes out.. did I say hope? I meant pray.
Android and tvOS are the easiest to write something as complex as Channels where the devs have the most control and have the ability to use lower level of programming if necessary, and not be stuck w/ the stock video players (exoplayer and avplayer, respectively) if they want.
Let's have them focus on 2 great clients, instead of 3-5 half baked ones.
Exactly this. When I had my TiVo, I realized how old all of the apps were and it was because TiVo was waiting on the creator to update them. That's when I quickly realized no one updates those apps or on the smart TVs. That's how I discovered AppleTV and led me to Channels. Best decision I've made.
Having only bought Samsung TV’s for the last 20 years, I can’t imagine using the hot garbage that the Tizen OS and its underlying hardware runs on as opposed to a dedicated streaming box. I actively disable as much of it as possible (turn off auto showing the home screen, uninstalling any apps you can) and use the TV remote for source switching only to prevent accidentally hitting a button to bring up their apps/on screen menu. I control everything with the set top box remote.
I’d much rather the small dev team work on other things.
I for one would like to see for Tizen OS, I am only missing couple apps with Tizen and Channels being one of them, I would not use set top box any more. Netflix and other native apps have much better video when played directly from the TV OS also no limit on sound. Has this attitude changed since the last post, what would it take to get Channels on Tizen platform?