I am a new channels user and absolutely love it. I am currently testing it on an a ubuntu vm on my esxi server. For plex, I currently have a hp microserver running Ubuntu server that I outfitted with multiple hard drives and is a pretty sweet dvr setup. My question is can I install channels on the same server as plex? The idea would be to add all of my libraries that plex is managing to channels and then eventually uninstall plex.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I've got both Plex & Channels installed on the same system without issue. Though I prefer Channels, i'm not uninstalling Plex just yet. Plex has user profiles.
Presently Channels' support for large libraries—and navigating them—is not very good.
I personally use Plex for my archived movies and series, and Channels just for DVR purposes. Perhaps Channels will improve enough to meet that need, but it's not there yet.
If you're looking for a single program that does both, I happily used Kodi in my household for both purposes for several years.
Ok so my movie library of 700 titles would not be a good fit for channels. So now I'm thinking of using channels for DVR and Plex for movies. Also it sounds like having them both on the same Ubuntu server is fine as well.
Thanks!
I'm doing much the same without any real issue... Recently began running Plex and Channels on the same macOS server, as it is finally time to give up on Plex ever truly fixing their DVR and stability issues (stability for VOD is one thing, but instability with a DVR service is a dealbreaker).
I intend to keep my Plex Pass, as Plex's archived film and tv management appears well worth the cost to me, but Channels is far superior wrt live DVR from what I have gleaned thus far. I've used the Channels player apps for a long time now (best app by far on iOS to tune HDHomerun streams IMHO), but the DVR service is really amazing. Can finally take advantage of TVE and integrate everything, though the scrubbing of my existing libraries of content is inferior in pretty much every way to Plex.
No biggie, I don't mind paying for excellent software, even if it does feel a little like I have to double-up with two separate subscriptions for what I wish could be accomplished with just one.
Yeah i would like to just use one as well but I have a bunch of movies and also complete seasons of shows and I know that channels won't do season folders like plex will so management might me a bit cumbersome withoit plex. But, channels dvr blows plex away. It also has ATSC 3.0 support where plex does not (even though I only get audio out of one channel for some reason but it's still new so I'm sure that will be sorted out)
Defintely see the need for both though. Plex started as an awesome media organizer and then moved into dvr. Seems like channels started as a dvr and then is trying to move into being a media organizer.
Yeah, well the recent repeated crashes I've been experiencing on Plex + the fact that their guide service situation is such a PoS right now has led me to Channels. Channels' support for TVE really piqued my interest some months ago, but my hand was forced due to the recent Plex stability issues more than anything else.
I suspect Plex will add support for the new ATSC 3.0 tuners soon enough however. (I don't really blame them on not supporting that out of the gate.) And let's be honest, Channels support for ATSC 3.0 isn't perfect either; yes, you can hear the audio, but as you noted, there appear to be major issues with downmixing of the audio channels (similar to SD's Windows UWP apps), not just in channel count, but also in the audio leveling. Frame sync with ATSC 3.0 has also been a major issue for my setup at least.
I have two of these new SD ATSC 3.0 tuners, but I wasn't naive to expect things to be 100% right out of the gate. I'm still relying more on my two other dual tuner SD boxes for important DVR stuff atm, as the new boxes were purchased more for my field of work.
I have Emby and Channels on the same sever.
As long as any software you install does not conflict with what web port they each use, u can install how many software you want on any one server. ie Channels DVR 8089, Emby 8096, Unifi Network controller 8443, UnifiProtect 7443, ...i had all on the same box for a while., along with a few radom file share NAS softwares i was testing that use other ports
I have Plex and Channels on the same server, an i5-8250 laptop with 8 gbs of ram. Runs fine. Channels on the laptop is mostly for live TV viewing and a few TV series recording. I also run Playon desktop on that laptop, and do a lot of recording on it also. The laptop has a 1gb NVME m.2 drive that is really great for fast forwarding, searching, changing channels, etc. My Plex media library is located on a mapped drive on another computer described below.
I have another Channels installation on a 2011 i7-2600 desktop with 16 gb of ram. That Channels install is used primarily for recording, then editing using MCEBuddy and Avidemux. I have a QNAP DAS attached via USB3 to the desktop where I have about 21 TB of movies and tv series in separate folders. I also have Jellyfin installed on the desktop, along with Playon.
Short answer is that Channels can be installed with other similar servers with no problems.
I’d love to hear some feedback on why navigating large libraries isn’t good. Also please mention which client you’re using.
The Movies for Instance is not well managed I have no Idea what movie I left off watching ... there is no in progress section for Movies or a way to filter out watched movies. I use Kodi to watch my Movies.
There’s an in progress section in the Library tab, as that sort of serves as the home base aggregate section for your library.
But you’re probably right that it’s silly not to have it in the actual Movies section. I’ll get that added in.
Are you using the enhanced library mode (Apple TV and iOS? Because that’s where it would be when I put it there. This mode should be used with larger libraries as the other layouts are designed for smaller libraries.
Nope Android.
Yeah ok, none of the enhancements for browsing larger libraries have made it to Android yet. I promise we’ll get them in there this year.
I understand the frustration of just a single tabbed list of movies, hence why we made better views. We owe it to you to get it added across all of our apps.
Here are just a few notes:
There are quite a few design choices that makes Channels difficult to use with large libraries. Most of these observations are going to be specific to the Android clients (since that is the main interface in our household).
The main issue that makes large library navigation difficult is the choice to solely use a tile/card paradigm. While using large images makes for nice visuals, the inherent lack of information density makes it a poor choice conveying large quantities of information.
There also currently is not a good way to view through in-progress/currently watching programs/movies. While there is something like this for Apple clients, it has not made it to Android yet.
The image/thumbnail interface could be forgiven as the primary choice for selecting series, but carrying it over to the episode list makes no sense. The thumbnails used are just a screen-cap from a point early in the recording, and really has no real meaning to the episode itself. Also, the horizontally scrolling list means very few items can be displayed on the screen at once. The metadata is only selectively displayed in the list—either episode number or air date, but not both—and to view the full details the detail modal must be opened.
When viewing a program with many episodes—we have a few programs that we record and keep every episode—scrolling to the end or looking for a particular episode is quite a chore.
While Up Next saw recent improvements, it still is a bit lacking. The order in which items are added—or even if they are added—is still opaque, and a bit mysterious. Also, when browsing from the main Library view, episodes are titled with the season/episode number; however when viewing Up Next fullscreen, the episode's title is used instead. Also, for some programs that are inter-related (Arrowverse, Chicago, etc.), having the date/time available would help choose which program to watch next.
The viewing of movies is awkward, and inconsistent. When selecting a movie from the inital Library view, it is presented in the same detail modal that TV episodes use. However, after selecting More and viewing the full library, selecting a movie presents its information in a different style of view. This “Movie view” is also a poor use of space, as long descriptions are truncated about half-way down the screen, and no way to view the full description or scroll the text is given.
When viewing movies alphabetically, there is no way to quickly navigate to a particular place/letter. (Plex achieves this with an alphabet list on the right that can be navigated to and selected.)
While “enhanced” library options are slated to come to Android, they still aren't there. Having an option to browse by genre would be nice.
I just added PLEX to the computer my channels dvr is on. I cant get any library to recognize or load any movie or TV, trying to figure out why and have no idea? Anyone who has done this, whats wrong? I point my library at my alternate storage.
Thanks,
Please provide more information about your setup on your computer.
Which operating system is running on your computer?
What is the directory structure for your PLEX library?
I'm assuming you are keeping the file names from the Channels recordings. Please confirm.
Do you see any errors in PLEX when scanning libraries?
Same here, on an old Dell with Intel *5th gen i5. Works great.
I been reading up on this thread and just want to confirm that if I wanted to set up Plex to read my recordings from channels that it would be possible. I have both packages installed on the same volume on my Synology DS920+. I'm looking to point plex to read the recordings folder so the shows i record show up there?
Of course that is what Plex does.