New user coming from Tivo

Channels is a great product, for me it's almost as usable as a Tivo with a few caveats. I think the below is what would make Channels the perfect product for old Tivo users.

Request:
Any chance Channels could integrate picture-in-picture in the guide so that you don't have to stop watching the TV to see Guide information? This would be a real benefit because I already love the guide.

Also, the 'Up next' and 'Recent' areas don't convey much information and bleed into each other. Could they look more like the 'Schedule' menu and be totally separate? You can't easily tell when things were recorded or when they are coming on, only that they were recorded and will be coming on. Also, Up Next shouldn't tell you what's in the past, it makes no sense. You could just take the Schedule menu and put it into What's Next.

Why not just call Recents 'Recordings'? I know it says that when you go into the menu but 'Recents' doesn't seem to clarify much.

The settings menu should be something you have to click to get options. As a frequent user of a remote you don't want the ability to slide directly into your settings. Once your settings are set you shouldn't see them again until you go looking.

Beyond these things I am loving the product, I just have to convince the wife it's worth it to get rid of Tivo. If the 4 above things can be accomplished my guess is that nobody will buy a Tivo again lol

Thanks for your time.

-New Channels Dude

Welcome to the community! Which device are you using at the television?

I would urge any forum user to frequent this part of the forum:

https://community.getchannels.com/c/channels-dvr/feature-requests

read through all the feature requests, and then vote in the upper left of the thread if you like the feature request. I don't know how the developers decide on what features to go after next, but at least it gives them some picture of what the users would like to see.

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Thanks for describing your initial impressions! We are also in the process of transitioning from TiVo.

We agree there should at least be more space between the What's Next and Recent sections in the client app (Fire TV here). The two sections tend to blend into each other, especially when each section's rows have the same number of thumbnails. This has had a WAF impact.

What's Next doesn't work well for news or other shows with episodes you can skip. I'm constantly going in there to set news and talk shows to "all watched" just to keep that section useful.

Recent (Shows > All in the web interface) works more like TiVo, once you get used to the thumbnails: it's one folder per show. In the web UI this can be sorted by Name, Recent (date recorded), or Year (date released) and I may request sorting as a feature for the Fire TV app.

The Recordings list in the web UI is very comfortable to a TiVo user, and I may request this for the Fire TV app, with options like folders.

WAF results to date:

Automatic commercial skip has been very much appreciated, helping to outweigh the effort of getting used to a new interface. Our TiVo is on TE3 so it's manual there, and in comparison auto commskip seems like magic. Also TiVo does not index all shows.

FF and Rew were initially an annoyance, until I showed how they are adjustable and why, with separate settings for sports too. Now this is a positive, mostly. Again: this is about getting used to a new interface.

What's New remains an annoyance and source of confusion to her, because it's too easy to wind up at an old but unwatched news or talk show if I'm not keeping up with maintenance. She took a few weeks to fully focus on how Recents is separate and more useful for her. Mostly this is all just part of getting used to any new interface though.

Live TV is frustrating to navigate in the client app without a number remote, but design choices are limited by streaming platform remotes, and anyway we don't watch live TV all that often except for news events.