Initial Impressions 3+ Months In

Channels DVR Server
#1

Just to provide some context. Being the ones our friends & family come to when they have A/V issues; we've had plenty of experience w/ Cable & Satellite DVR's over the years. Personally we grew tired of prices increasing as quality of there service decreased (in particular the hardware & software of their DVR's). That being said we delayed 'cutting the cord', primarily because of sports.
But once we'd had enough, I did some extensive research to see what would give us the majority of what our household watches & be able to save $ w/o sacrificing too much quality.

Initially we bought a HDhomerun Prime & tried a # of 'live streaming services' but there were a # of sports networks that were missing from each. Then when I read about the TV_Everywhere feature that "Channels" would be implementing, we thought that this might be the best fit for our needs based on 'quality for the price' of service. With all that being said, here's our initial thoughts.

Pros:

  1. Value [Quality for the Price]

  2. Stability / Reliability

  3. Great Support (in the Forum) from the Devs. & the Community

  4. TV_Everywhere feature

  5. Buffer: ability to be able to pause “Live TV” for 90+min.

  6. Usability: Intuitive Design (w/ only a few caveats)

  7. Pic. Quality [in particular on AppleTV(4K) unit]

  8. Sound Quality [for the most part, although we (personally) haven’t used it much w/ our H.T./Surround Sound]

  9. Com. Skip (works great the majority of the time)

  10. Customization: Lots of options (esp. in the Server U.I.)

Cons:

  1. No/very Limited Manual Recording option

  2. Maintenance: Options/Settings [wish we could make more adjustments through our streaming boxes (& tablets) rather than having to login to the server]

  3. Personalization, (or lack there of): wish we could have multiple “folders” to sort our recordings from other users; & would like more than 1 “Favorites” in the Guide with the option of renaming (your list of Fav. Ch.s)

  4. Missing “Window”: ability to be able to watch (& esp. listen) to “Live TV” while scrolling through the Guide (& the rest of “Channels” U.I.)

  5. Lack of P.i.P./Split-Screen: would love a Quad-Screen feature, similar to the AppleTV apps for PS_Vue & ESPN.

In conclusion, on balance we are quite impressed. And have recommended it to friends & family who are interested in shaving or cutting the cord; as long as they are somewhat tech-savvy :slightly_smiling_face: (in particular regarding the initial setup).

1 Like
#2

Check out QuadStream, I use it all the time with my Channels streams for news/sports and it works quite well.

#3

Thanks for the suggestion. :+1:

After doing a little research, it seems that you've had more success than some.
If you don't mind sharing, I'm curious what hardware you're using for your Channels DVR_Server. Personally I'm running the (Ch's) DVR_Server on a Nvidia Shield (2015-16gb); & was wondering if you think that's powerful enough to be able to handle this (QuadStream) feature?

Additionally, what other streams &/or apps have you tried with QuadStream (besides "Channels"),
& what's your success rate been?

Also how (well) does it work w/ the multiple audio streams? {i.e: swapping?}

Thanx in advance,
MsFit

#4

Good summary MsFit.

I'm in process of doing similar thing - moving from DishNetwork to using Channels DVR. So far I've been impressed with the setup. Agree with all the Pros you have. The only additional Con I have is related to how fast forward works on Channels DVR vs DishNetwork DVR. On Dish, fast forward, you can see what you are fast forwarding through, and stop when you get to the point you want to watch. With Channels, since you can't (at least I can't) see while fast forwarding, I usually just use the 30 second advances to move ahead. Even so, when you advance, many times there is a lag to the video picking back up (sometimes up to 5 seconds). It's not instant like my experience with Dish. Maybe it is my setup, but I have a gaming PC (i7, 8 core, gaming GPU, 3 TB storage) powering the DVR and use Apple TV and Fire TV as my viewing clients, so don't think I could have much better hardware.

#5

Seek speed depends on your network. You can run some speed tests between your dvr and tv to see what's going on.

#6

Thanks tmm1 - looking into this, I confirm maybe my network is the problem. I have an Apple TV 4K and this is my speedtest result:
Download
41.05 Mbit/s
Latency
13.29 ms
Jitter
3.69 ms

I Have AmpliFi mesh system and everything is pretty close to each other. I'll do a little more digging to find the issue and see if I can resolve this.

#7

That's quite low. My amplifi gives me 600mbps on the Apple TV

#8

I can also confirm that I have no lag after advancing. The video resumes almost instantly. Hopefully you will find your issue, I can understand how that would be frustrating.

Honestly, with the implementation of automatic commercial skip, I hardly use manual advancing much anyway.

#9

Make sure u are connected to the 5ghz AC band wifi and that is it is at least 40mhz mode, or 80mhz. Do a channel scan with a wifi app and make sure u use the least crowded channel in your router.

Ideally, connect the client device via Ethernet.

#10

Hello, and excuse me for jumping in but this thread is current and is as close as I can find to hopefully get my question(s) answered.

Your solution is exactly what I have been looking for! I spend most of the year at our home in NC but have a condo in Florida. The condo provides each member with a full boat cable tv subscription which is a mandatory service paid in our dues and I have been looking for a way to leverage it to my NC home.

My account under the condo cable service supports TVE. So I subscribed and downloaded Channels Plus to my HP 270 2.9GHz, 4MB Ram, Win10 Home 64bit machine and assigned a WD 1tb passport (USB 3.0) drive.

Long story short, Flawless! I am totally impressed with the real time and recorded performance of the usb data connection which will save $$ in hardware. I am on a 100mps internet and using 5g wireless.

So Here's the questions?
I now need to get the live and DVR recorded content from my windows dvr server to my Sharp Aquos smart TV.
I don't need OTA so I don't need and HDHomerun device correct? I have ordered a firestick 4k so will loading your software on that and following directions take care of the window to firestick to TV streaming ?

Again sorry to jump in but a lot of your online documentation was prior TVE and that caused me some confusion with the folks wanting OTA .
Regards, John

#11

Thanks tmm1, Helios2 and speedingcheetah - after some tweaking and moving the DVR PC to Ethernet, I've got the speed between DVR and AppleTV to 150mbps. I think there is probably more tweaking that I can do if tmm1, you truly get 600, then I will shoot for some more also.

I now take my Con stated earlier. Super happy with my setup now.

Also got my new "Swiss" remote for Apple TV today and so far love it. So much better than the standard Apple TV remote! (Swiss cable company developed a remote with Apple that is more like a standard remote with buttons)

#12

Yep, just ensure your Remote DVR is set up correctly before you travel to florida. Once you set it up, you can try it out with a mobile device with wifi turned off.

Then, with your fire tv stick, just connect to channels and you'll be streaming everything from your NC home.

Learn more here: https://getchannels.com/docs/articles/cant-connect-remotely/

#13

um mean this? I found one called Salt

or

ir though it says. and not backlit. meh. but better than the trackpad remote.

#14

Yes, that's the remote. Correct, not back-lit, but seems you can memorize the few buttons quickly. I love it so far, but mainly because I hate the regular remote.

#15

Jon, Thanks for the quick response!

My TV service in Florida has a physical DVR but are you saying that the remote process (link you sent me) is used weather I go from my NC Study (channels dvr server) to florida or to my tv in the next room?

#16

If you are channels set up at home, and you have a good data upload speed, you don't even need tv service in florida. Just stream remotely from home.

Plug the box into your tv, connect it to internet, log in with Channels, and voila, you're using the setup at your NC home.

#17

I think you have his situation reversed. His full cable service is at and provided by his FL condo residence and he wants to watch that remotely at his NC home, so he doesn’t have to pay for cable service there too.