Nice!
Yeah, with the right deal from your cable company, cable can actually be pretty cheap when combined with Channels. People think cable is so expensive, but it's the hardware rentals across multiple TVs that make it so expensive. With the right plan, it can be as cheap as any of the limited streaming services out there.
Precisely. If I wanted to go with a 100% Xfinity solution w/ a DVR shared by 3 TVs, I'd probably be paying on the order of $20 per screen per month.
Like Spectrum, They don't Have Whole Home DVR so you would have to pay 12.99 for each DVR if you wanted to access programs elsewhere in the home. Plus an additional 19.99 for DVR Service. Here is their Rate Card for DVR service.
I gladly pay $8 a month for their DVR. Just the near perfect Gracenote guide data is worth having for OTA.
Combining OTA, Prime cablecard, TVE and Locast is a very nice setup that just works for me.
I also like being able to record high quality OTA and easily view it with the Channels apps.
My apologies in advance because I know a lot of people are going to blast me and I'm sorry to sound disrespectful but what is wrong with people? Complaining about $80 for an ENTIRE year of DVR service that includes guide data and the ability to skip channels and watch remotely. I know everyone has a budget but geeze! Are people that tight with their money. These developers deserve our damn support. They have a great piece of software that blows everything else out of the water. In my opinion the Channels App and the DVR are the best software I've ever purchased. Do you all not know that Spectrum charges $12 a month for ONE DVR box? If it wasn't for the Channels App my wife would have forced us to go back to cable. To me $80 a year is a steal. I will GLADLY continue paying for this great software and service. Thanks again to a great development team and company! People waste more a month on Starbucks and don't think twice about it. Rock on Channels team. I love you !
I donât understand this forum. The originator of this forum complained about this 3 years ago. The forum jumped from Mar â17 to 7 days ago. Who is complaining about the price in the last 7 days. 80 dollars is great price. Tivo service is 15 dollars a month or 150 a year, Spectrum and most cable service is 19.99 + 12.99 for each DVR a month. The cheapest is Plex, at 5 dollars a month but don't support TVE, and always takes for ever for video to start or constant buffering. Channels DVR is the best 5 stars.
When u consider the competition, Emby and Plex mainly, they each have the 3 level subscription thing, with lifetime option.
DO the math, Channels is the most expensive then the rest out there.
Plex is $5 monthly, $40 annually, $150 Lifetime
Emby is $5 monthly, $54 annually, $120 Lifetime
(Kodi is Free, but requires u know what u are doing to setup and add in things.)
Channels is $8 monthly, $80 annually. No lifetime option
I honestly would prefer a lifetime price...buy once and never have to pay again.
I did so with Emby when it first had that option and got it for $100.
After only 2 years, I am already paying more than the others lifetime price.
Emby and Plex are both far more powerful and nicer looking home media server, and have Live TV with DVR and guide.
Emby has very active and communicative devs and updates. Has desktop PC software and other apps across all platforms too.
Only thing those competitor software lack is TVE support.
But, its all economics and sustainability.
I know Emby is pretty much is run by just 2 people, 1 being the main dev that does 98% of all the work, and it is his full time and only job...so said one their blogs at some point.
I think Plex has a team or company of some sort behind them.
I can only gather from what i see on these forums, that Channels is just a couple devs working on the software in their spare time? Or at the vary least is not a big team with some company with deep pockets to fund them. (feel free to enlighten me Channels devs/team members)
If they can't sustain work on the project at lower prices, due to overheard and other reasons, then that is their decision to set prices where they are at.
While I would like a one time Lifetime option, paying $80 a year, (plus $20 a month for Philo I chose to use anyway) is still way cheaper than Comcast that was over $150 per month for one cable box and no DVR ability.
While we all want things for cheap, I am happy to pay a reasonable price for a quality product.
I've tried everything you mentioned above. Plex is crap, it flat out doesn't work properly and when it does work, it's a bad user experience. Emby was a nightmare to get going. And then once I did, I found that there was no consistency across their client apps. It honestly felt like bait and switch or false advertising. I've tried them on two separate occasions and I will not give them another chance.
HDHR is another option. But the product is terrible. They've literally spent years rewriting it so they have one code base for all platforms and it's been nothing but an unmitigated disaster. What they have now is a UI disaster and they've added no essential promised features in over 2 years now. They're a hardware company trying to deliver software.
A "lifetime" option may be nice for some, but it's not feasible for a product that must be continually developed and updated. These guys need to get paid. And the product needs to be supported or it's not worth their time. How would paying for 2 years of a product you're going to use for 10 years make sense in any way?
Simply put, Channels is the 'best in class' product. Nothing else comes close. It just works and my family has absolutely no complaints about it which can't be said for any of the other solutions.
I tried to use Plex once, many years ago, but they did not support HDHR Prime at that time. Tried again few years ago, but no free trial to test it out...no thanks. The Plex server my buddy has, ugly...hate the look of it. Seemed to work ok though.
Emby was great for me and I have been using it for several years now. I switched from WMC to Emby. It was easy enough to setup and maintain.
In the last year, they have very much unified their web UI and apps.
I my self have had detailed communications via their forums with the devs and helped test and resolve issues that did come up over the years. Their desktop software (Emby Theater) is my favorite as since it uses MPV as its back-end player, i can use a custom .conf file and tweak some things to enhance the video quality.
Emby is far more polished and modern looking UI than Plex or Channels. But those are software's whose primary goal and usage is as a home media server, with Live TV/DVR as secondary feature added in. Channels (and HDHR software) primary function and goal is Live TV/DVR.
I am happy with Channels DVR, but I do think it needs more work, more access to advanced settings and configurations for us advanced users, and UI refresh and polish (with a black theme).
Regardless, since I discovered Channels DVR few months ago, with its TVE ability, it very quickly became a reality to allow me to drop Comcast CATV that I have had for 35yrs, sell my Prime tuners and switch to streaming and OTA for TV via my Nvidia Shield.
(The money saved per months, after about 6 months, I calculated, will pay for the equipment I had to buy to make the change over (2 Shields, HDHR Q, Antenna, cables, etc) )
While, yes, Channels at $80 a year I think is high compared to others, I do believe it is well worth it. I can only hope that the cost does not increase though, not with out some big major reason/incentive/improvement that requires it.
As far as lifetime price not being sustainable, well, both Plex and Emby are ticking along for many years with no issues. But each company is different....with overhead, commitments etc. I can understand if Channels can't do a Lifetime plan for those reasons of sustainability...only they know their accounting.
I have Fios with cable card and HDHR Prime. Iâm able to watch all DRMâed channels and even get Fiosâ promotions of free access to paid channels like Epix and NBA League pasa via the Prime. If you update your cable cardâs channels lineup youâll see that you have access to free channels every week. In order to access the DRMâed channels, I use TVE. WIth this setup, Iâm able to watch and record all channels provided by my TV package, even the DRMâed ones. And again, you even have access to Fiosâ weekly promotions of free premium channels. This past weekend I got about 7-8 NBA League pass channels. For $8 a month that canât be beat.
My wife can use Channels on our Apple TVs without my intervention. When she is working at her desk she uses Channels on an iPad without my intervention. That alone is worth $80 a year! 
If you shop around and try other options like Emby and Plex, you will get a clear understanding as to why theyâre cheaper. They are simply subpar compared to Channels. I wonât even get into cable providerâs DVR offerings as they arenât comparable price-wise to channels. Simply put, there is no better solution than Channels at the moment. $80 a year is less than $7.00 per month, subtract the $2 that these developers pay for guide access and youâre talking about $5 and some changer per subscription on a monthly basis. You consider this a lot of money? These guys have to eat! They have to pay bills! I think their pricing is ok, especially when every issue Iâve had, mostly due to my errors, were quickly tackled by the developers, sometimes within 10 minutes even on weekends! Good luck finding support like that elsewhere. Thanks to this software and a HDHR Prime I currently pay $72 a month for Fios Triple Play with Gigabit up and down speeds and access to over 300 channels. I can honestly tell you that u wonât find a better quality software or support from any other competitor in this niche. I know, cause Iâve tried just about all of them, except for TiVo.
This is what keeps bringing me back. I really miss some critical/simple features from other software, but for $8/month, Channels DVR is worth every penny. I beat up on the missing features, but the developers really do a pretty good job keeping up with the most critical items of the overall software operation. I think I've only had my server crash one time in many months, that's impressively solid compared to some of the other software I've been using.
I must admit that I do miss features found on other software like Plex. In Plex I had an iTunes Plugin that automatically added my library and playlists to Plex, that would be awesome on Channels. Also, Plex has a Phillips Hue plugin that automatically adjusted lighting when playing movies. I would literally PAY for these features on Channels!! Channels also needs to add importing of TV Shows as well. Either way it goes, I left Plex because of the slow tuning of channels and basically non-existent support. Channels is in a position where they can corner and dominate this niche if they just add a few more features. Iâm willing to wait, and support them along the way.
Disagree on both. Like I said, I personally have used Emby for several years and the support and direct communications I have had with them is excellent and in ways is slightly superior to what I have seen here with Channels. More so in that there is more technical talk and better trouble shooting that happens and more control over things done. Emby is also far more open to user suggestions and changes than Channels have been.
Again, Channels is NOT a home media server alike to what Plex/Emby mainly is. It is strictly a Live TV and DVR software, meant to be a "cable box" replacement in my view and use. It has its use. Media Sever softwares also have there use too. I have Channels for my TV needs, and Emby for my local media files/movies etc needs. Both function fine on same server box.
And...if folks want to argue what is the best Live TV/DVR software.....well, in my experience, Windows Media Center of old, NO ONE has yet to beat that in how sleek, ease of use, reliable, and audio/video quality that was...and it was FREE. ...but Microsoft killed it off.
This is were opinions come in. I respect your opinion, but I tried Emby and wasnât impressed at all. Kodi does what Emby does with fully customizable themes, and itâs free. Channels is just that, for CHANNELS, wasnât meant to be a Media Server per se. And please remember, that channelsâ importing of private media feature is technically in âAlphaâ stage. When Channels develops this further, and includes the option to import TV shows and polishes up on that interface, the gap between them and what Emby offers is going to be shortened even more. You comparing Channels to Emby or Windows media player, full blown media servers, is unfair at this stage in Channelâs development. Give Channels a year or two and this argument will be moot. Please remember that channels is the new player in this niche and they have already surpassed many services that have been around for many years as far as quality of software and support. And as far as them being open to suggestions and ideas, I literally WATCHED them implement media importation into channels after a mere few people chimed in on it here on this forum. And I believe this happened during the weekend. If you sit here and say that you have received support within minutes directly from developers during the weekend, Iâd highly doubt it and would ask you to prove it. Iâve been on Embyâs forums and have requested support from them and it took 24-48hrs to get support directly from the developers. Again, donât compare apples to oranges and please consider that Channels is a pretty new company when compared to its competitors.
Windows Media Center....not PLayer.
And if anything, WMC is the most like to Channels, as it was a TV centered thing. was not really a media sever at all. U could setup some sort of media library and file share but was via Windows Media Player and through the OS sharing system...which did not work well at all.
As i said in my other posts....the others are far more mature software, never argued that point....Channels is working to catch up to that status.... I was there for the same trek that Emby took....even back when it was called Media Browser.
Again, you comparing WMC to Channels is a far reach my friend. WMC was decades in the making from a multi-billion dollar company. Channels is a new company with a handful of employees and theyâre doing a good job on their software. And youâre beating on a dead horse talking about WMC when itâs not even in existence or being developed anymore. Sounds like youâre reaching here. You admitted that Channels is better at live tv and DVR when compared to Emby correct? Well, that was our point!! Itâs better at what itâs meant to do. Comparing Channels to other software meant to do other things is simply moot. When Channels fully implements media importation and fails, which I doubt, then, and only then, can it be compared to Emby or others. As far as live TV and DVR goes, Channels has everyone beat - HANDS DOWN.
Not at all. WMC is still use today by many hold outs...there are large forums dedicated to those users still.....and it is relevant to the topic of Live TV competitors.
I can certainly compare Channels to other software that do Live TV. After all, most of the user base here are folks that came over to Channels from said competitors.
No one asked you to defend Channels. And like I said, i like it for what its main purpose is for. I only take a small issue with your statement that put down Emby support when u say u tried the software it and did not like it...etc...nothing wrong with that u did not like it, but u clearly can not say much about the support or communication with them as u have not spent several years using that product and being part of their beta testing process as I have. (at least ur post seemed to imply u only used it for a short time)
Channels is "better" (which is of course relative to each users use case) due to TVE support. I have yet to find any other software that supports that.
Also "better" in certain cases, with the more cable box like UI for TVs stream boxes etc, for those folks that want that style of thing. Emby and Plex, is more traditional UI appeals to more techy folks, in my experience with my tech illiterate friends and family when I compared them in use, they found Channels easier to use.
Emby is "better" for Live TV in one sense as it has its own Desktop software (not just web browser) for us PC only users, with full HW acceleration and codec support. WIth some tweaks, and MadVR renderer support, I can make even 480i channels look amazing on a 8K tv...(yes I said 8K...buddy of mine has one) . So "HANDS DOWN"...Emby clearly wins out on that one. Once Channels makes a stand alone desktop player software, then they can compete with that..
But, Emby nor Plex, has no support for TVE (yet) ,only local hardware tuners. I can still use it for my OTA channels if i wish, but I dont cause Channels all them all plus TVE.
Many holdouts is what percentage of the market? Iâm not defending Channels, Iâm defending its purpose and what it does. You clearly lost track of that. And since you like correcting minor grammatical errors, learn the difference between there, their, and theyâre please. You YOURSELF admitted that Channels is better at Live TV and DVR than Emby or any other competitor for that matter, so your argument is null, as that was our point to begin with. For someone whoâs so critical of Channels you sure spend a lot of time on their forums. Emby forums donât have enough trolls for your liking? Lol Me and the user Kryptonite simply agreed that when it comes to Live TV and DVR, Channels is the best, in our humble opinion. You decided to chime in just to disagree then reaffirm our statements. Donât know if youâre trolling or being serious, but either way, not gonna sit here and debate about opinions. My opinion stands.
