So i have now downloaded about 100movies with Anystream and probably about a couple hundred tv episodes. All in 1080p.
I get recording errors sometimes. Less often then i ever did with playon desktop. However it lacks a scheduler. Other then lack of schedulers im happy with the product.
It is designed to record streaming services, not broadcast shows.
Sorry. By scheduler. I mean auto start/stop downloads. IE. Stopping downloads from 5p-11p while I am home. My isp is only 10mbit. So I don't want it using my bandwidth while I'm home. Playon Desktop had that feature built in.
Ahhhh, now I understand.
The simplest would be to load up the queue at 11pm and let it run until 5pm the next day. If it has not finished, simple suspend the program until 11pm and resume it again. You can probably use an external scheduling program or scripting language to do this.
Has anyone found a service that supports 4K or HDR?
Does any of them below work with virtual channels where i can see on tv guide?
"
Anystream
Streamfab
Audials (im very curious on this one)
Myfilmdownload
Kigo Video Recorder
FlixGrab"
You have to make sure the import got the correct guide match before adding to virtual channel
Since thread has been revived ill give my experience since post.
Playon Home 6/10 rating
I broke down and purchased Playon Home. Its identical UI to old Playon Desktop. It works for downloading shows from services like Roku etc. Playon records things live. 1hr show takes 1hr to record. Playon home is limated to 720p. Picture quality is "ok". It has a subscription feature to automatically download new shows. It sometimes works. Sometimes when i cue up 100s of downloads (usually entire series) if 1 episode errors, they all error. And u have 100+ failed recordings
Anystream. 8/10 rating
It varies from 480 to UHD. 75% of content is available 720p or better. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to what is HD, SD, and occasionally UHD. It works great with amazon and services linked to amazon. Netflix seems to break on Anystream sometimes. But is usually fixed in couple days. Anystream downloads as fast as it can. HBO will use HEVC all other services are using AVC. 1 hr show downloads as fast as your internet allows. Anystream also limits number of downloads. It caps out around 1,120 max downloads per month. I get anoyed by the max cap on downloads. But in reality 1000+ downloads a month is still good. Anystream is expensive. But i think it was worth every penny.
I downloaded every single HBO original series/mini series/ movie with this. It took a long time.
Very active support forum
Audials. 3/10
This is a recorded not a downloader. But is capable of doing 2x speed. It crashed a lot for me. I gave up and Uninstalled it. Could be the windows desktop, chrome version, bandwidth (isp) limit. But it never really worked for me
MyFilmDownload 5/10
They will give you a free 2 week no limit trial if you email them. When this works, it works great. I experienced lot of download hangups where they just stopped downloading but did not error out. My ISP is slow and not super reliable. I think any hoccup in connection messes up downloads and it fails to resume. This program lets you select resolution and bitrate to download at. For me it didn't work great. For someone with faster/stable isp i think might have better luck.
This software has no support forum and non existant customer service.
Kigo -10/10 (Negative 10)
Just don't. Don't buy it, don't do it. I had program crash, failed downloads, some videos where unplayable in VLC. Just don't do it. Run away.
Virtual channels works with your local content. You can use these software to download content. Import it into channels and use those inputs to make a virtual channel. But it won't automatically make virtual channels.
You can set Channels to scan the download directory that way it auto-imports your downloads.
So probably the best one to go with would be AnyStream?
Depends what you want to do. All of these are recorder/downloaders for streaming services such as Netflix, Prime, Hulu, etc.
If you want something to just integrates with channels. And all you want to do is download the occasional eppisode or series. Then get Playon Cloud. Its $0.10 - $0.15 per 720p recording. Playon Home (desktop based) is also good for this.
If your goal is to data horde large volumes of streaming content for offline consumption in Channel/Plex/Kodi/etc. Then the 720p limit and recording at 1x speed sucks donkey balls.
In that case you could use apps like these. In which case i like Anystream. I have not tested StreamFab but it looks to be equally as popular as anystream.
I chose to download from streaming service because i don't trust bittorrent / usenet / direct download sites. As well as potential for virus. There's also inconsistent encoding methods, bitrates, file name structure etc.
Things like Playon Cloud are legal-ish under law. (Playon is essentially time shifting)
I used Playon to download all the Marvel Movies and the Stereo audio really sucks.
I wound up downloading everything again with Anystream ... when watching blockbusters great sound is a must have.
I'm really confused. You are saying to not consider it at all but you gave it a rating of 10/10.
Did you mean 0/10?
Other than that, thank you for your analysis of the different services. You got me curious about AnyStream now.
Negative 10 out of 10
I've been using Streamfab with the Amazon downloader. Initial cost is pricey, but they provide frequent updates to keep up with the provider changes. So far, the titles I've downloaded have been 1080p video quality, high bit-rate and 6 channel audio. This program also downloads CC stream. A 2 hour movie takes about 5-7 minutes to download and process.
Oh sorry, I failed to notice the negative sign.
Makes sense now. 
Do any of these services allow you schedule programs to record/download in the future? I know PlayOn Home does, but it requires Windows, and since it records directly to the hard drive, I assume it would need to be running 24/7, or at least during the hours new programs would run. I have a Mac and RPi4. My problem with all of the different streaming services is forgetting what I've been watching on what service. Would be nice to setup something similar to Channels passes where it just starts recording/downloading when a new season or episode airs, rather than needing to remember to look for stuff. "Continue Watching" that most of these services have is lacking.
Playon Home is only one i know if that does that.
There are programs that seek out new episodes via bit torrent and automatically download. But that is a discussion for a different forum.
Which of these that comes with subtitles when downloading a video?
I use PlayOn Cloud from time to time and it records the closed captions fine. Of course this could also be dependent on the service it is recording from. I mainly record from Paramount+ with PlayOn Cloud. I think the rule is if the source has the CC or subs, the recording will have them.