When setting up future recordings (especially movies), it would be great to have a notice somewhere that I’ve already recorded something so that I don’t accidentally record it twice.
As our libraries grow larger and larger with external hard drives, this would help user prevent duplicates that take away from tuner availability. There are great features that let us view upcoming movies and schedule them from that tab, but this would save many users the need of writing down what they’ve recorded or keeping another Tablo screen open to their library to show what’s already recorded.
Since show/movie information isn’t readily available on a recording, and often gives a failed to load error, it’s hard to remember if a movie is already in our libraries. It should be noted that the Roku app doesn’t give the show/movie information anywhere except for the scheduling option.
On another note:
There have been discussions about the DVR / Video Library thing. An advantage with the good previous generation devices recording can be exported and the drive can be moved to another, new, tablo.
I understand the inferior new generation lacks this. If/when your device pukes who-you-gonna-call? Isn’t this nearly a proprietary option to store and watch recordings?
True, regardless of location you’re always subject to loss. If recovery is possible, tablo does not store recordings in a single fine, in a single location on the drive. Whereas an exported single mp4 may be easier to discover [speculation].
I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think we’ll ever gain the ability to easily export files from the 4th gen. Mabye we’ll have a way to shove an old drive into a new Tablo some day, though.
I’m not so worried about a recovery effort. I’ve handled the merging of hundreds of files already. It’s unfortunate that I’m unable to find any show/movie identifying information so that I can copy/merge them more quickly. I usually just copy over the entire rec directory and plug the drive back into the Tablo so I can use the dates to more quickly determine what I’m merging.
I think there’s a larger issue at hand, though, since show/movie information disappears for some reason. So often I’ll start a recording to get the “Unknown Error” screen popup as soon as I hit play. And this is starting from the Channels portion of the overlay. So, I have to back out or hit cancel, but it’s nearly guaranteed that the Info portion will also give this error when this happens. It’s almost like it’s losing the information and it’s not stored within the recording or on the Tablo anywhere.
And of course… there’s no easy way to see what a movie/show is about unless you are able to get series/upcoming information from the top of the screen or that overlay works during playback. For my use, this is the biggest feature missing from the older models – the ability to click on a movie/show and see in that popup what it’s about.
Yes, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves about the new Tablo. We record a lot of Datelines, 48 Hours and 20/20 episodes. Many are reruns so we like to review them to see if we already watched them. If we’re lucky, all we get is a title. Sometimes there isn’t even a title if it’s a new episode, because the titles and details aren’t displayed until a day or two before airing. We then have to go online to try to see what the show was about.