My elderly mother can’t read the guide on the tablo because the fonts are too small even on her 50 inch TV. She prefers just channel surfing anyway and is somewhat at home on the Roku “Live TV” app (channel) with the up/down buttons. I want her to use Tablo so that she can see local news easily and I love the feature of having the ability to disable channels that I know she wouldn’t watch. The problem I see after observing her is she can’t simply channel surf with the up/down buttons on the remote. Currently, one has to press the back button in the Tablo app to go back to the guide, and then navigate to the next channel from there. The fonts, logos, and text are too small to read anyway (for her and me) even on a bigger TV and the way it is now is not a great channel surfing experience in my opinion.
Can Tablo make it so that a user presses up to go to the previous channel in the Tablo guide and presses down to go to the next channel in the guide? Can this be done without having to bring up the guide exactly the way the Roku “Live TV” app (channel) does it?
I think all streaming devices now have a similar feature now. The app for Roku just added it. While watching any live program, if you click down a few times, it bring up tiles showing what is on the other channels. You don’t click up and down to surf, but rather right and left to see what is on and select a show.
Thanks for the feedback. On Roku’s “Live TV” app (channel), you simply click up or down on the remote to change the channel and channel surf. It’s simple and works well. On channel change, it briefly shows the channel number (if enabled), the name of the program, and a brief description. It’s a great example of a intuitive TV interface.
I would prefer a numeric keypad on the Roku remote to quickly enter the channel number and go to channels I prefer, but the industry as a whole seems to prefer the long way of navigating to a favorites section, then scrolling to search and find your favorite, and then finally selecting your favorite channel.
I don’t know if I understand what you’re looking for, but in my area all the bigger OTA stations have apps on tablo. They don’t stream network shows, but do stream their locally produced news and weather shows, at the time of OTA broadcast, and also at other times, as well as various other local interest shows. They have local content that they stream but never broadcast OTA.
So maybe your mom can click to a local TV app, click OK and there will be a local show to watch.
Yes, I’m aware of the apps for the local stations. They usually all have different interfaces to learn though and not really great for quickly channel surfing. It’s not a big deal for me personally. But for older folks like my mom and her friends, it is. I’ve observed them, and they will stay within the app that is most intuitive (currently in this case Roku’s “Live TV” app). If I show them how to use another app, they will forget unless it’s super simple and intuitive. If they see a pop-up with some cryptic text to “sign up for better features” or other ad, they exit the app immediately and go back to Roku’s “Live TV” app.
I’ve made suggestions recently in the Roku forums to add the ability (either via a hardware device or other means) to have OTA channels available in their “Live TV” app. They currently have some local news available but it’s not the full OTA channel content. If Roku would do that, then that would solve what I’m looking to achieve with my elderly mom’s setup because they have channel numbers (which her and her friends remember), up/down navigation to surf, and plenty of channels with different content. I’m not sure Roku will ever add OTA to their “Live TV” app however.
I understand what you are trying to accomplish. Sadly, the market is getting away from channel numbers, and instead using names. Also, the streaming devices are really trying to work with a minimum of buttons.
Have you ever reviewed the channels that your mother really watches? I have 55 channels, but have found that more 90% of my viewing is about five channels. I would bet that your mother does the same. Have you considered putting her 5 - 10 most used in the Favorites? That would make her surfing much easier.
Just trying to come up with something using what is currently available…
The favorites option has potential, but needs work in Tablo. It should be an easy to manage list and being able to set the order of it would be great. Or it would be great if, from the guide, I could press the “*” button on the remote when a channel is selected and it would bring up a menu of options. One of those options could be add/remove from favorites. Then, there should be some indicator on each channel in the guide that it is a favorite. It would be great if the favorites could be listed at the top of the guide in an order that the user specifies.
Also, as soon as I open the app, my favorites should be there at the top and front and center for me to select from with everything else like suggestions, trending, etc below it. I’ve already indicated something is important to me as viewer when I’ve added it to my favorites, so visibility of that channel should have a priority I think. Right now when I open the app, there’s a giant and almost full screen display on the home page of something I’m not interested in, followed by other submenus I’m not interested in when I scroll down. I had to hunt to find the section where the favorites were even listed. Better yet, it would be great if the home page was customizable by the user so that they could show/hide only the stuff they are interested in.
One other possibility, would be just to connect an antenna to the TV and teach my mom how to switch from HDMI to TV mode. That would eliminate the need for Tablo altogether for her since she doesn’t really care to use the DVR feature the way I do. She would use the built in TV tuner for TV and then use the HDMI mode for the additional content in the Roku “Live TV” app. I discuss this a little here: Setting Default Viewing Section of Tablo App - #3 by rdtab
Check out some of my other posts where I talk about this a little further:
Thanks for your feedback. It’s always welcomed and appreciated. Cheers!
