Watching Channels TV from afar

Channels DVR Server
#1

Well, my wife and I vacationed in Scotland last week, and when I was bored with the BBC's TV lineup, I thought I'd give Channels a try (although I thought the odds of success with the hotel WiFi were zero).

What a pleasant surprise. I got Channels up and running on my iPad in a blink of an eye and we were watching DVR recordings as if we were home on our local network. No dropouts. No video or audio problems.

I simply could not believe it.

One additional surprise. At home we have Apple TV with Sonos Arc as our main Channels streamer and Channels DVR recordings are typically way off on lip sync.

The iPad playback overseas had no such sync problems. Everything was spot on (to use a British phrase).

I was curious as to the hotel WiFi speed (my home internet speed is 200 mbps up/down) so I ran OOkla and the hotel was close to 500 !!!

Anyway...great job Channels !!!!!

2 Likes
#2

Heading to Scotland myself in a little over a week. Used Channels when we were in Italy 2 years ago, love the freedom it provides.

#3

Great to read, thanks for sharing! I remember my first time experiencing the same, it's a really well-designed system.

Hmm, I have an AppleTV with Sonos Beam and DVR recordings have never been off on lip sync, I'm pretty sensitive to that and would notice. I'm curious what's up with yours to make it a recurring problem? In the Channels app have you tried the Experimental Audio Driver? It's under Settings > Playback > Advanced. The Sonos app also has a "TV Dialog Sync" slider in the Home Theater setup for each room, that may help.

#4

I have a beam also in another room also with Apple TV 4K … I think it may be the Sonos Arc and LG OLED combo plus I have ATSC 3 for the major networks and Im not sure what the audio is.

I have an older TV with ARC (HDMI 2.0) that doesn't have the latest eARC and it has Atmos but not a full implementation.

If I get lip sync problems… I can rewind a few minutes and start over…sometimes that works. Also…it seems to get worse after 30 minutes or so. I meant to try turning off commercial skipping to see if that’s the cause.

But I have tried a lot of trial and error fixes but haven’t found the cure.

And yes…I have tried experimental audio……no help.

#5

Sounds like ATSC3 specific issue. It may be better in the TestFlight beta app (getchannels.com/beta)

#6

I can record on an ATSC 1 channel and see what happens. I will test and report back.

I know if I go to the network streaming app (like Peacock for NBC) and play the same show…there is no lip sync issue.

#7

Glad you had a good experience! We have done a lot of work to optimize for this use case, including testing at many hotels and even on flights.

#8

The WiFi rules on the United flight I had yesterday said “no streaming” and even no downloads. But, I used the TMobile free WiFi…not United WiFi and it was mostly for social media.

#9

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