The most concerning issues are that in watching my Tablo - (live programming) not through PLEX audio does not match even remotely close to the audio.
Also the Plex app fails consistently. I know it’s 3rd party, but it shouldn’t be. The PLEX Community is large, and most of them are people who are cord cutters (or want to be). How soon will Tablo invest to create a legitimate app for Plex? This is a MUST!
Static IP - Really there’s no way to configure your IP address manually? This is basics 101 guys. This needs to be added to the next firmware update. People have been requesting this on your forums for over a year, and is a relatively simple ask. This is an always on device, and has no reason to need a DHCP lease.
Tune-in time of stations - Why does it take seconds to tune in to programming? This should be near instant.
Guide updates - Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems you need to manually update the guide???
[quote=“Zippy_Dan, post:1, topic:8211”]
Static IP - Really there’s no way to configure your IP address manually? This is basics 101 guys. This needs to be added to the next firmware update. People have been requesting this on your forums for over a year, and is a relatively simple ask. This is an always on device, and has no reason to need a DHCP lease. [/quote]
This is NOT a consumer grade feature, mostly due to how easily it can get royally screwed up. DHCP reservation at the router is better for consumer equipment- always.
[quote=“Zippy_Dan, post:1, topic:8211”]
Tune-in time of stations - Why does it take seconds to tune in to programming? This should be near instant.[/quote]
Not for this type of device; it is transcoding to H.264 and then prepping HLS streams. If it ran RAW (like the HDHomeRun tuners) it would tune immediately, but then Roku could not be a client device- pick your poison there.
[quote=“Zippy_Dan, post:1, topic:8211”]
Guide updates - Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems you need to manually update the guide???[/quote]
That does update on it’s own normally. Slowly, but on it’s own. If your’s isn’t you need to drop a line to support… And you probably need to get with them anyway for your audio issue, which is definitely not normal…
I disagree. It’s an always on / always connected IP based product and the consumer/user of the product should be allowed to determine how to provide it with an IP address. Just my $.02 but I prefer to assign IP addresses to my devices such as this. The point here being that the user should have the ability to determine how to provide, either static or dhcp.
Would one of you experts pls explain the technical difference between static IP and DHCP reservation. I don’t really understand the difference, but have always used DHCP reservations for the 30 some things I have going in our house. Thanks:slight_smile:
Static IP is set in the client. You have to make sure that the IP address you’re setting doesn’t conflict with any addresses the DHCP server is going to give out. If using static settings, most clients won’t use DHCP for anything, which means you also need to set the netmask, router, and DNS servers in the client as well.
DHCP Reservation is done in the DHCP server. The client uses DHCP to get an address as it normally would, but the server (router, usually) always returns the IP address “reserved” for that client. The benefit to using DHCP reservations is that you can make all the changes for all the devices in one place. And the clients will still get DNS servers, etc, from the DHCP server (router) as they normally would.
I cannot think of any technical advantages to using Static IP addresses for client machines.
Why take the time to create that many client DHCP reservations? I only use it for things that require (aka function better with) a static IP - Tablo, Plex, etc. Otherwise let DHCP work it’s magic and assign addresses normally.
You do it for the same number of devices either way - the ones that need it.
Personally, I think it’s faster to do it in the router than setting static in the client, since it’s the same UI each time and you don’t need to waste time figuring out how it’s done on each device.
Sorry - I was more talking to @sodaman_2000 for setting up 30 different reservations. Really, there are only a handful of devices which would require a reservation.
I’ll admit, I have 30 or so reservations myself. But that’s because everything that my home automation system can control has a reserved IP address. So that includes the TVs, the Sonos units, the security cameras, generator controller, Lutron repeaters, Harmony Hub, Synology file server, Mac mini server, etc, etc.
But most pro’s would likely use a solution that is more robust/ configurable/ expensive than the Tablo, since they would probably need more multicast type setups with a lot more clients.
I disagree. While I would consider Tablo consumer hardware as well you can still have other “PRO” stuff that it has to work with. I run pretty high end gear for my network, routers and servers in my house but for AV stuff I tend to stick with devices like the Tablo. I really don’t see what the debate is all about. Even my old DTV receiver, Samsung TVs, previous Tivo unit and on let me choose either DHCP or Static IP. It’s not a question about what’s best but the fact that a vendor took away the ability for the user of the device to choose how to best set it up for their use.
IMHO, static IP address for the Tablo is a useless, or at the very least a very low priority feature since there is a workaround, i.e. DHCP reservation. However, what is the uses to know the Tablo IP if clients (at least the officials one that I know and use, i.e. chrome, ipad app, android app) cannot connect to it when Internet is down ?
Internet being down should NOT affect your ability to use the Tablo and watch TV and recordings. Did you really mean Internet? Perhaps you meant your local network, i.e. what’s in the house?
Also, what’s useless to you might be important to someone else. You are correct that a reservation is a work around and one that we are “forced” into as we have no other choice in the matter. That is the issue I believe, the choice was made for us.
Spunky03, try it by yourself. Disconnect the WAN port of your router and try to connect to the Tablo. Notice that “http://my.tablotv.com/” is not a local address and is rather resolved over Internet and that all the magic is done on their server, so no luck with that if Internet is down. One would think that you can simply use the local IP address of the Tablo on your local network to access to your recording or live tv… Well, no! You just end up on a test web page server. I also tried to snoop the custom ip port they use, but even with that, it does not work. I guess that it need some custom header or cookie. I stopped my investigation at this point since the Tablo Ripper guys already did all the reverse engineering and that it can be used to export your recording for offline watch, though I don’t know yet any way to watch live TV without rerouting the antenna cable.
By the way, I’m still waiting for a example of usefulness of using a static IP address for the Tablo instead of a DHCP reservation. If nobody can come up with an advantage, then this empirically prove that this is useless. And even if you come up with one, it is still a very low priority feature compare to have the Tablo work offline.
