4th Gen Tablo Problems from the Get Go

Truly disappointed with this 4th generation launch.
This is not ready for prime time.
Where is is the 4 tuner box?
Seems headed the same direction Tivo did a few years back

The hardware is probably Okay - even though the power cord looks super cheap.

but it’s the app that sucks.

Do users with any experience need a home page like that. If so fine but have a settings to startup in another menu instead of being bombarded with useless information.

And if you live close to the mexican border you might have a few meican stations that will clutter up your home page. You may only be interested in the movies and sports on those stations.

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What makes you say it’s headed the same direction as TiVo? Do you have long term experience with Tablo?

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Just got the 4th Gen Tablo and here a a few issues and questions. I’m running the new Tablo TV app on a Roku.

Quick channel view/change with down arrow -gone??

Do the FAST (internet) channels require a tuner? In other words, can I record three or four different FAST channels at the same time?

When exiting from a live channel back to the guide, the guide goes back to the top, not to the the channel you were just viewing

In the settings on the Roku app there is not a choice to turn the antenna amplifier on or off (there IS in the iOS app)

After selecting “Favorites” as the active guide, when exiting from a live channel (selected from the favorites) back to the guide, the guide reverts back to “All” channels ( not “Favorites “)

When selecting ‘Favorites’ as the guide most of the guide data does not reappear (load) leaving the guide data blank

Almost all your questions can be answered “Not yet, but hopefully after a few more releases of the Roku app”

FAST channels do require a tuner. I tried doing four at once, and you will see an orange bar (good) under the first two and a red bar (conflict) under the second two.

snocat-
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, the Roku app seems a little half baked / 1.0ish. Too bad about the FAST channels needed a tuner. Need a 4 tuner version

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Okay how about these questions.

Some one decded to create a tab called library. And thus even though tablo is a DVR product it takes 2 extra clicks to access the all recordings tab. Of course tablo is not a library system you can’t add videos from your phone. I don’t think tablo is trying to move into the plex space.

And there is a tab called latest that contains nothing.

Or some super small font scribble at the bottom of the left menu. So small that even on my 60 inch sony I had to go to within 8 feet to read it. And low and behold it’s some giberish about storage and a percent available. This is like going back to 2014. The percentage available concept was abandoned many years ago as useless.

Of course it might be nice if the roku app would remember what menu it last exited from so the next time you started the app you could avoid all the garbage on the home page and get to what you want to do.

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Hopefully the programmers will address all those issues soon, though “library” likely will stay.

You can fix bad and buggy implementation. It could take 1 1/2 years

Crappy design is a whole other issue. Usually heads have to roll and a lot better and sane design review process has to be put in place.

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FAST channels do not require a tuner. I can record 2 ota chans that do need the tuner and a max of 2 FAST at the same time. FAST comes over the internet which should not have a limitation. Two seems to be the limit.

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Interesting. Good to know. I just saw a limit of two and didn’t try to add regular channels to it.

I fully expected to be able to record more than 2 FAST shows at a time since it is over the internet. My next test will be to determin how many FAST channels can be played at a time. I can do the test with 9 Roku devices. My tests on playing different recorded shows on 9 devices was flawless as was my legacy quad with 10 playbacks.

I still need to find out why the Android devices are jumpy before I use them for any of this type of testing.

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Since the gen 4 appears to have a 100 Mbps ethernet port and if using an external drive the recordings are mpeg2 how many playback streams can be supported.

@zippy I streamed 9 different recordings simultaneously on the 4th Gen and 10 on my legacy quad. Could have had more streams in each case but was limited by my playback devices.

I had to dredge up memories from the days when I defined and managed the design of semiconductors to figure out why there is a hard limit to the number of FAST channels that can be recorded or watched simultaneously.

The chip resides between the inputs and the disk drive. For recording, data has to be buffered b4 sending it to the disk. Since the disk is formatted into sectors, the buffers have to be large enough to store at least two whole sectors of data b4 sending it to the disk.

There are a total of 4 buffers. Two for the 2 ota inputs and 2 for FAST. More buffers have to be added for each additional FAST recording. Buffers take up chip space which is at a premium and costly.

So, we are forever limited by buffer space. I strongly suspect that the 4th Gen chip is a modification of the chip used in the legacy quad. The mod was to redefine 2 of the buffered ota channels and use them for FAST. I expect the next generation to be a quad ota with enough buffer space to allow recording of 4 to 8 FAST channels.

Pluto Filmrise, Freevee, Fawsome and Tubi are just some of what I’ll call FAST networks that are available. I believe the FAST channels on Tablo are the Scripps FAST network which is growing.

Is there beta for 4fh gen Tablo?

Humor ahead. Pretty sure everyone with a 4th gen is part of the beta.

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I am not having any of the issues others seem to have. About the only thing I have seen is some icons are blank or sometimes missing and the “latest” section can take a little time to show anything sometimes.

All my series recordings are working fine and no playback problems really, once in a while a glitch, but were streaming and depending on home internet. So no telling if that was the real cause maybe as I have problems occasionally on other apps as its streaming.

I have or had in the last few weeks to couple months, a Tablo Quad (sold), Tablo HDMI (sold), HDHR Flex ATSC 3 (sold), TiVo Bolt and Zapperbox and this white Tablo I would rate one of the top OTA DVR’s after TiVo.

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Yes, there is a decent sized beta testing group for the 4th gen Tablo.

I’ve pre-ordered the 4 tuner 4th Gen. Scheduled to ship in December. I would like to join the beta group on r I receive it.