NEW - Tablo 'Preview' App for Amazon Fire TV & Android TV (v 1.2.0)

I like the new app. The interface looks great. I like the additional info on the Live screen and the new layout for Recordings. No Sync is good. I prefer the old FF and REW speeds of 10 and 20 seconds instead of the new 6 and 12 seconds. I think a 6 and 20 compromise would be great for skipping commercials. The additional thumbnails on FF and REW were a bit of info overload at first, but now that I am used to it I like it. I hope the jump to seasons in recordings by FF gets reinstated. I know filters are missing but it’s a preview app. Sometimes when deleting the last recording of a show the show’s icon on the Recordings screen does not go away until a refresh of the screen. Overall good job.

Yes! We will be adding this to the Preview app in a future update as well.

Interface looks cool but I also didn’t notice any difference in speed. Also when I’m at the end of the show and push back it takes me back to the amazon interface (exits the app)

Also wish you could see all of the seasons for a recorded show in a row at the top and choose the season you want without having to scroll through 200 episodes…

I found an odd audio problem with the preview. On many shows the background music is very clipped. It sounds like an 80’s video game music. At first I thought I had a blown speaker, but the audio is normal with the release app.

Nvidia ShieldTV.

I tried the new app and like the interface, but agree with everything said above. I was hoping with the new app that the “Herky Jerky” motion of the recordings would be solved, but it isn’t. I have the latest generation of the Fire TV and record at the maximum setting and sometimes watching sports is just unbearable. Is there any plan on fixing the herky jerky motion of the recordings with this new app?

Unfortunately there is an issue viewing Tablo on the newest Amazon Fire TV. You can read more about that here: NEW - Tablo App for Amazon Fire TV Update (1.3.4)

We’ll take a closer look at this. Stay tuned.

Sorry, we’re not seeing this here. Are you watching a recording, or live tv, or an in-progress recording when this happens?

Oh good, so you guys at least know about it. Thank you for sharing that link. I’ll follow that thread instead of this one. I’m just happy to know there will be a fix one day!

So finally got around to trying this new preview app - UI is nice.

From the blog post: “Once those features are finished, the Tablo Preview app will replace the current Tablo app for Amazon Fire TV and Android TV.”

But I really hope this app doesn’t go live with no support for Tablo Connect (aka remote streaming).

I’ll take a video, can I post it here?

Fear not, we’ll definitely tackle that before the switchover.

Sure!

Perfect - great news! :fist_right:

What am I missing here? Regular app on Shield already has the improved and faster FF/preview. It also already doesn’t have to sync. The new Preview app seems like we just jumped back in time to when Tablo was first launched. I get it is a work in progress and the sub menus will be added - recent recordings, TV vs movie, etc. That said, the preview app is in no way useable to us at the moment. It has hardly any features, and each screen takes forever to load! We have a lot of recordings, and not being able to see recents renders it completely useless. We really love the existing app, and really dislike the new guide feature on Preview app as well. It is annoying when we just want to quickly scroll down the guide. The preview just results in taking up valuable guide space, limiting how many channels can be viewed at once. I am sorry if this sounds like I’m dumping on the new app, but we are pretty upset about this. The existing app is perfect on the Shield. We also use the genre section a lot, and are not happy that will go away. I just dont get how this is considered an improvement, so maybe I am missing something? Is the current app different on the Shield than other Android TV?

I’m with you - feels like change simply for the sake of change. Nothing truly improved just slightly different.

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There are any number of reasons that an app gets rewritten.

  1. it was poorly designed and/or written to begin with

  2. Over the years any number of fixes were hacked into the app making it difficult to fix/enhanced

  3. a new developer likes some new development style or SDK/API.

  4. Current or future OS/API changes.

  5. And as always this change will make future changes easy to make/maintain, the code more extendable, etc. At least for a year or two.

  6. And my favorite, the developer can’t figure out the current design or code flow so it gets redeveloped into something only they understand.

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Are these in order of importance? Insert Number 0) Improved customer experience.

The current preview app has a long way to go still. Mine keeps crashing on Shield TV and I am being asked to restart the app. I would have much rather the focus be on new features to the existing app - like the popular ‘limit to # of episode’.

“I’m with you - feels like change simply for the sake of change. Nothing truly improved just slightly different.”

Since some have the above opinion, at times it’s hard to believe the initial release of a preview app “improves customer experience”. Of course if the underlying code base is improved that could be the longer term expectation.

But why would a new preview app be needed to improve customer experience?

This is all clearly laid out in the blog post, but the bullet points are:

  • Native app vs. HTML 5 app = faster, better experience
  • Supports newest API - faster, more streamlined communication, access to newest features, no syncing
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