First off, I am in no way affiliated with Channels, in case someone may think I’m benefiting for my words in this thread.
Plex seriously needs to see what Channels (getchannels.com) is doing with their Live TV and DVR implementations. I don’t know Plex’s roadmap but they may even want to consider acquiring the Channels company, which I believe is just 2 devs.
Plex Pass has been costing me $40/year, whereas Channels is $25 for AppleTV app, $15 for iOS app, and $8/mon for DVR and I can say that Channels is very much worth the cost if you have a want/need for a lot of Live TV viewing with DVR. Even without paying extra for the DVR functionality, the cost to just get the apps for Live TV alone is well worth it, IMHO.
I have been a long time Plex Pass subscriber and have no intention to stop using it since they are the best when it comes to movies, but they are seriously lacking with TV and DVR.
Here are the major benefits to Channels (all these are applicable to both AppleTV and iOS devices):
Real “timeline” style program guide
Near instant channel changes
Instant RW/FF/seeking (and 100% reliable!)
Can watch a show while it’s being recorded!!! (you can even watch a show while it’s being recorded, change devices and continue where you left off, again WHILE recording is in progress)
Just the few items above make the relatively high cost of Channels worth it for me. Plex’s Live TV and DVR recently exited beta but I don’t see any improvements from when Live TV was first released so not sure what validates them no longer calling it a beta. Plex’s DVR alone is unusable for me since it’s so unreliable when trying to RW/FF through a recording, which is just embarrassing.
Although Plex may have their priority in other areas, Channels only has 2 devs and yet they are light years ahead of Plex’s current implementation.
I’d have to agree. The Channels devs have done tremendous work in a short time. Their live Tv, time shifting, program guide, reliability and general usability on the Apple TV is FANTASTIC and absolutely puts Plex to shame. The Plex Live TV on Apple TV is like a bad joke in comparison.
And yes while they have a much smaller set of feature and platforms compared to Plex, in just over 6 months they have released android TV beta apps, developed a fully functional DVR etc all of which is phenomenal for a tiny 2 man team.
You know why they have been so successful? Visit their forums and you’ll see. CONSTANT forum engagement with their users, immediate fixing of bugs all of which pushed their product forward tremendously.
Plex on the other hand mostly ignores the forums, ignores users willling to beta test their apps and is glacially slow at big fixes/improvements as all development work goes into advertising flashy new features to get more Plex passes.
Plex on the other hand mostly ignores the forums, ignores users willling to beta test their apps and is glacially slow at big fixes/improvements as all development work goes into advertising flashy new features to get more Plex passes.
I have to disagree on this point - granted I’ve only been on here a couple of months (used Plex longer then that) but I pushed my issue of only being able to record 3 shows at one time and I had a Plex Ninja and who I consider a Plex Expert ( @johnm_ColaSC ) work on the issue, identify it and pass it on to the developers. it’s been a couple of weeks since that’s happened so I’m hoping for a fix in the next version or two.
Fixes take time - there is regression testing, testing to make sure the fix doesn’t break something else, whole bunch of other stuff.
A smaller shop like that - they can probably push the bug fixes much easier as it’s a 2 man shop - they know the code - plus some of the fixes were pretty easy - saw one where they were basically saying if it’s a high numbered channel it’s hd. That wasn’t the case where one person was having an issue - the hd and sd channels were all mixed together. So the fix was to look at the flag to see if it was tagged as HD. Pretty easy.
Maybe I’ll change my mind of how closely the dev’s listen to us over time, but right now I’m fairly happy with the responses that I’ve received. I’d like faster releases, but who wouldn’t like new features faster lol or fixes!
It’s good to see you got some help with your issue but as a Plex user and forum participant for over half a decade i can tell you us old timers have noticed a big decline in Plex user support, bug fixing in a push to expand to as many platforms and as many features as possible (to appeal to as many wallets as possible).
Myself and many others have spent many forum threads and hours doing the beta testing for Plex, posting all the logs and screenshots to assist all without ever a single reply or interest from anyone at Plex.
You do have a point though that a small team that’s intimate with the code will turn around fixes quicker but as a Plex employee once said here in the forums, their management quickly pulls them off a project once it’s first delivered to something else…and that means they rarely get to really polish it, fix bugs, address user feedback.
Yeah, I can’t vouch for how responsive the Plex dev are to users on this forum but I get the sense that they work by taking feedback from a select group of people and not on a “voting” system from the wider population of users.
But it doesn’t matter how they run things, they built Live TV and DVR functionality into their product, yet their file format doesn’t support reliable RW or FF. When you get a team together to work on a DVR, being able to RW/FF should be top 3 on the feature list. I mean, they even brought it out of beta like this. Least they could have done was keep the beta tag on it to have an excuse for how poor it is.
But anyways, there’s no match for Plex when it comes to movies and TV shows that are transcoded offline, but they should be embarrassed for what they released for Live TV and DVR.
My point in all of this is that I wish Live TV and DVR would work better and more reliably so that I can use it as my all-in-one solution but I guess we all know generally how well TV/VCR/DVD combos fared.
You do have a point though that a small team that’s intimate with the code will turn around fixes quicker but as a Plex employee once said here in the forums, their management quickly pulls them off a project once it’s first delivered to something else…and that means they rarely get to really polish it, fix bugs, address user feedback.
I definitely don’t like that second comment at all . . . I’ve been a subscriber since 3/16 and love Plex for what it does but if they don’t get the ability to record more then 3 shows at once I’m gonna have to reevaluate my position.
I keep intending to buy a lifetime pass but keep holding off . . . . guess I will hold off until this is at least fixed.
I don’t have any other issues with Plex except for this but for me it’s huge as during the Fall season I will have 6 shows recording at once on my TiVo and I purchased 3 HD Homerun’s just for the Plex DVR.
I’m currently running a secondary pc with another DVR on it but I really don’t want to have to do that as that pc is more to process movies that I’ve ripped from my collection.
@stephen.kim said:
First off, I am in no way affiliated with Channels, in case someone may think I’m benefiting for my words in this thread.
Plex seriously needs to see what Channels (getchannels.com) is doing with their Live TV and DVR implementations. I don’t > know Plex’s roadmap but they may even want to consider acquiring the Channels company, which I believe is just 2 devs.
completely agree, channels is amazing. even includes comskip integration by default. it just works , this is what i used to say about plex, not these days. there’s something to be said for small agile companies which can run rings around the larger slower established ones.
If it weren’t for their rather pricey $8/month dvr i wouldn’t even be wasting my time with plex dvr.
One thing that really disappointed me with the AppleTV Live TV interface, is that there is no DVR function there.
After having using Channels app, that missing function hit me in the face the minute I looked at it. Considering the competition, to put out the Live TV without DVR function on AppleTV may not have been a great choice. That keeps me using Channels DVR. The AppleTV Live TV function should be just like the Plex IOS app, Program Guide, Recording schedule…
pay $8 a month to record / view shows off of my own OTA device? no thanks. way overpriced and limited to apple, imo.
what about android? browser? smart tvs? and something…anything other than HDHR? what about my own media? yea… sorry but this doesnt even come close to plex in overall capabilities. not to mention it only does OTA type stuff… for $8/month … ?
i do agree that plex dev support / presence on forums is… minimal at best… and sure, some Channel functionality is better on apple tv (which, personally, i dont use)…
@cihypan said:
pay $8 a month to record / view shows off of my own OTA device? no thanks. way overpriced and limited to apple, imo.
what about android? browser? smart tvs? and something…anything other than HDHR? what about my own media? yea… sorry but this doesnt even come close to plex in overall capabilities. not to mention it only does OTA type stuff… for $8/month … ?
i do agree that plex dev support / presence on forums is… minimal at best… and sure, some Channel functionality is better on apple tv (which, personally, i dont use)…
I think you missed the part of this thread that was comparing Channels specifically to Plex’s Live TV & DVR functionality since you mention that it “doesnt even come close to Plex in overall capabilities”, which you are very correct on.
BTW, Channels does seem to currently only support HDHR but it’s not just OTA since I’m using an HDHR Prime with FIOS. And to some, like me, the $8/month is very much worth it to have a functioning (reliable) DVR and access on all my devices (which happen to be supported by Channels) and not have to rent a DVR for each of my TV’s. I can’t say that Plex’s Live TV & DVR comes close to a viable replacement to a cable box.
Channels is venturing out to other devices also (FireTV & Rokuk) but those seem to be in the early stages.
or fixes!
didnt mean to sound so negative.