I received a Tablo ~2 weeks ago, using it with an HD Antenna + Apple TV, with a recommended “Seagate Expansion 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive” for storage. It is very promising, though I have repeatedly hit 2 issues that have me on the edge of returning the device:
When I join a recording in progress (for example, sitting down at 3 PM to start to watching a game that started at 1 PM). Instead of starting from the beginning, I am taken directly to the live broadcast instead of starting at the beginning. I have compensated for this by muting the audio and asking my Apple TV to “rewind to the beginning”. Alone, this is not a huge issue…
…but I just started watching a game (fortunately a test broadcast), and the app kept quitting out of the recording without setting any kind of placeholder, so that when I went back to watch the recording again — wait for it — it kept bringing me to the live broadcast.
It seemed like the Apple TV app (or perhaps the Tablo itself) was legitimately struggling with certain portions of the recording, causing the video to crash back to the menu. Certainly bugs happen, and I am sure this will get fixed, but combined with the lack of periodic markers getting set so I am within, say, 1 minute, of where I left off, I wouldn’t mind so much. But instead I am dropped out, and then back to live coverage. Perhaps this is to compensate with a known degenerate condition, where the concern is that if you rewind prior to some poison data, you’ll repeatedly fail, but this seems like a poor UX.
At this point I am back to looking at alternatives and I am considering returning the Tablo (it is useless to me if I can’t trust it, and it is rapidly losing my trust, not to mention that certain features are lacking that seem to be covered by other products).
I usually watch recordings on a Roku and never had that problem. Sometimes when I exit out, or get kicked out and start the recording again, it starts at the beginning and not where I left off.
So I tried it on Chrome with Windows 10 and did indeed get the same problem that you have. It starts playing at the Live Broadcast.
I would give Tablo Support a shout. It sounds like some kind of bug that they should be able to correct. I haven’t pursued help on this issue because I don’t have that problem with Rokus
In progress recordings do not start at the current live TV spot on the Roku and Fire TV and iPad. This isab issue which I think arose with the tvOS 10 update. See here:
For the “start from the beginning” fix, that is great news. I look forward to the update.
As for the “quitting back to the menu”, this was happening to me last night repeatedly including during live broadcasts. One time, I am fairly certain the Tablo rebooted, as it couldn’t connect for about a minute (couldn’t find it on the network), and then it popped back up.
I strongly suspect there is something about intermittent bad signals that is causing the video processor on the Tablo to crash out, based on the behavior I have seen. I’m not sure if I have stracktraces sitting on the Tablo, but I am happy to share with @TabloSupport if I do…
@dagerydoo - Do you get a lot of incomplete recordings or pixelation on live TV? It could be that the player is struggling with a bad signal but that’s just a guess.
I am just getting started/evaluating the Tablo as a OTA DVR solution, but I recorded and watched a complete game last Sunday without issues (some very minor intermittent pixelation). I would say yesterday’s recording was less pristine (different antenna position, as I am experimenting/trying to keep my wife happy), but I would prefer that the recording/playback survive a spotty signal than fail completely.
Tablo will attempt to-restart a recording in progress once the signal drops but it’s best to get an antenna/position setup that provides a consistent strong signal before you get too far down the road.
Well, the in-app rescan gave me a full “5 green dot” signal from Tablo app on the antenna location after I placed it in its new home, and a 20 minute watch of the channel live after placing the antenna seemed fine. If I can’t trust the Tablo to persevere while recording in seemingly ideal conditions (from everything I can observe: the Tablo in-app signal status, a live checkin on the signal), then I don’t know if this is the best solution for me…