If only everything were that easy. $8 for DVR is not bad at all compared to what cable companies charge for it.
The price wasn’t a concern. After having my credit card information stolen multiple times, I have a personal preference to pay once with a gift card or something instead of using a subscription. I’d gladly pay more than the current price to have the option to pay once for multiple years.
4 Likes
Agreed. I don’t need a discount for paying for a longer term; I just want to pay less often and be done with it. Yearly at $96 would be fine with me.
2 Likes
I vote for a lifetime option for the Channels DVR. I cut the cord so that I don’t have to account for a monthly payment. I want to pay and be done. Thanks for considering it.
6 Likes
+1 for lifetime.
9 Likes
As a new customer who is really enjoying your Apple TV App, I’m in a bit of a shock that the $8 monthly subscription to enable the DVR service that we host ourselves on our dedicated hardware is so expensive. This is just a software toggle that your enabling for us. Why are we paying a monthly subscription for this -vs- just a one time price?
Now, if you were hosting our data in the cloud, ok, the cost could be justified, but we are installing server software and hosting everything ourselves. There is no logical reason why anyone should be paying such a high cost for this service especially on a monthly basis.
Am I missing something? I would love to really understand what the “DVR” subscription cost is covering after the cost of the app was $24.
This has been asked and answered on several threads. Basically, you are paying for continuing development and the subscription for guide data.
there are a lot of people willing to pay a premium price to this team, due to the quality of the product and responsiveness of the developers.
1 Like
In addition to the above, Channels DVR offers multiple features not available on any other solution which are worth the increased price, such as: com-skip, autopruning, simple DVR scheduling, offline viewing, etc.
Test it for a month (you can cancel at any time) to try all of the features.
Channels absolutely has the best DVR solution! And dev support is superb.
1 Like
As the thread starter my question wasn’t “is Channels worth the price” it was can we be given an option that allows paying a lifetime fee or a yearly fee to reduce the exposure of my credit card.
It is absolutely the best combo I’ve used so far and would gladly pay a higher rate if I could pay once a year or if the developers came up with a lifetime fee.
Anybody who wants to complain about $8 being too much please discuss that in one of the threads actually about the cost.
2 Likes
Now that Plex has live TV the competition is getting a bit stiffer… 
I think offering a discount for yearly subscriptions would be nice, like $80 per year instead of $8 per month. I’ll gladly keep paying for Channels DVR since I think the experience is more intuitive than Plex but it would be nice to know whether the roadmap will continue to evolve to be feature-competitive (such as supporting remote playback on a client device).
Except it really sucks.
2 Likes
Yup. The Channels boys have nothing to worry on the DVR front.
Not so fast. This is version 1.0 for Plex on this platform. Channels is more mature and has a head start. Give it time.
Until the Plex Team changes their EPG design it will continue to garbage. I bought my HDHomeRuns specifically for the Plex Live TV Beta. When I found out how impractical and inefficient their EPG design was I begin looking for alternatives and happened upon Channels. The Plex Team has a great deal of work to do before they can be taken seriously in the Live TV Space.
1 Like
I have no intentions of jumping back to Plex anytime soon for live TV or DVR… but it’s good to have some competition in this space. I look forward to expanded platform support since I also have a FireTV on one of my screens (though I haven’t tried the beta Channels app yet for that platform).
The main thing is that “on paper” Plex seems to be a better value, though Channels has the superior user experience. Having an annual package at a discount would be nice.
1 Like
Completely agree. Plex is awesome for everything else but live TV is seriously lacking. And that will probably improve.
Channels DVR is as good as it gets. I signed up to the DVR with no intention of continuing, I just wanted to try it, and couldn’t see myself wanting to pay $8 per month for it (especially here in the UK where free TV (FreeView and FreeSat) ain’t that great!). But after spending a couple of days with it, I’m more than happy to pay.
When you break down the $8; the guide data alone is worth about $3/4. Then you’re paying $4 for a superior DVR, and, in most cases, one-to-one customer support (at least my case 
).
Annual subscription or lifetime subscription would be preferred for me too, but I guess it’s down to perspective. Monthly payments mean you can cancel at any time without loss of money. On the flip side, it would be nice to pay upfront then not have money coming out each month.
1 Like
Channels Live TV and DVR is far superior to PLEX. So many reasons why it is much better. The only advantage that PLEX has over Channels is the user profiles and remote access. However, user profiles is not yet supported for live tv in PLEX. Channels is planning to add remote access so that really only leaves user profiles. When I say remote access I am talking about all of the apps talking to the PLEX server from local and remote. It would be nice for Channels to not only support this kind of access but improve on what PLEX is doing. PLEX mainly has a serious performance problems by not supporting direct play of MPEG 2 and also not supporting hardware transcoding (at least that I can see).
1 Like
With channels now having remote live and recorded playback in beta testing on iOS, I’m sure tvOS is just around the corner too.
They obviously want to fully compete with plex because they have put alot of effort into the other clients like Roku, fire and android (what, no Windows 10 app?)
I don’t think lifetime subscription is in the best interest of anyone, but I could see an annual option. I will always take the cheapest option available, but With all the recent re-issues to my credit/debit cards because of exposures, annual, even at $96, would reduce my labor overhead on these changes.
In addition to user profiles though, which turns out is not the problem I thought it would be in my house, I think the ability to move from one DVR to Channels for recording hoarders is a deal breaker for some, because they would always need plex, because there is no import feature. Channels is not a media center, it’s just the coolest DVR. Since I’m 100%in the iOS/tvOS playback environment and I no longer keep recordings after viewing, I get the best DVR, and don’t feel the disadvantages.
A yearly subscription option is now available: https://getchannels.com/2018/07/11/yearly-billing/
8 Likes
Great option…thanks for adding.