(COMPLETED) The "settings" should reveal the Serial Number!

Ridiculous that this feature is missing from the Tablo apps.

I am just now located 100 miles away from the Tablo device. Stupid me I figured I could log in at account.tablotv.com and pay $150 and successfully subscribe. But no. When I pay the $150 the next thing that pops up on the screen is that I “locate my serial number” and hand-key it into the screen. Only then will I have successfully subscribed.

So I guess now I need to hop into the car and drive for two hours so that I can be in the same room with Tablo. So that I can flip it over and read the “serial number” from the bottom of the device.

What should happen is I ought to be able to launch any Tablo app and click on “settings” and scroll around. And somewhere on the screen should be the “serial number”.

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It’s a one time thing, and the majority of users actually live with their Tablos. You’re the small number of cases, so suck it up.

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I agree that it should be there. Seems such a logical thing to include that I am surprised it isn’t already there.

@oppedahl - It’s also on the cardboard box your Tablo was packaged in and it’s also visible on the Tablo ‘name’ screen on the Roku app.

Support may also be able to dig your MAC out for you by having you name your Tablo something specific so we can search for it on our side if you don’t have Roku.

Would also love for the MAC to be in the Settings somewhere. I often start support tickets away from home. I have it on a post it at work now, but would have been easier had i been able to look it up remotely.

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Point taken - we’ll see if we can get it added to web so it’s easy for everyone to have.

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I think I requested that opening a support ticket from the Tablo should populate all data in the ticket. Makes no sense a user has to look that up over and over.

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@MotobikeMan It may show up soon :smile:

@Jestep We have this in place now. If you’ve contacted Support before, we’ll have your MAC on file. And even if you haven’t, if you have a subscription - your serial number gives us the information we need, so no need for back and forth. Keep in mind that for users with more than one Tablo, we may still have to ask.

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My point is if I click on the help and support link in settings you should be able to pass all the info, hard drive, serial#, mac, etc

I should clarify: any information filled out in the ticket fields in the past is persistent. We won’t need to ask for it twice.

Understood, but I mean from the settings screen it makes sense to have all that info present to make it easier to submit. Both from the URL in the page, but also just visible makes some sense. Does this seem like a far fetched idea?

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Sorry, that’s not responsive to the problem described. I might have two Tablos. Yesterday I sought help with Tablo number 1 that acted up in one way. Today I might need to make a ticket with the goal of seeking help with Tablo number 2 that acted up in a different way. Having the ticket auto-populate from yesterday’s fields is not always the right thing to do.

What is needed here is a way that I can readily check and confirm the MAC address or serial number of Tablo number 2 for today’s ticket.

Again, someone having 2 Tablos is a very limited use case, even more rare than linking the Tablo to your account and not living with the said Tablo.

I have multiple tablo servers so this is of little benefit. Instead of this feature spend more resources fixing the code so that help desk tickets don’t need to be opened.

And for some help desk tickets, take the business model of other consumer product companies. Charge for various types of tickets.

That is certainly unneeded for a fairly new product like the Tablo. The Tablo folks are trying to be as consumer friendly as possible, and charging for support would definitely hurt the company’s image.

I agree with Zippy. It would be one thing if the company were selling some product that is incredibly easy to put into service. Plug in the space heater, turn it on, and warm air comes out. No, in fairness to the potential customer who might buy a Tablo and try to put it into service, even a fairly sophisticated user can get stuck despite the best of consumer intentions. After all, there’s no HDMI port! Which I agree is actually a feature and not a bug, as it forces everyone involved to face up to the fact that the television is a client and should be treated as such relative to the Tablo server. But it means the user needs to focus on plugging in a media stick and ensuring plentiful bandwidth between the server and the client, and so on. As a second example the user needing to fiddle with port forwarding, the inability to turn off the DHCP client in the Tablo, and so on. All of these things require a certain level of support and it needs to be free of charge.

Most consumer modem / router combos from ISPs use UPnP which literally just requires the user to check the Tablo Connect feature and the ports are automatically forwarded by the Tablo on the router. Tablo has done everything to make this as simple as possible. Yes, there are select cases where people have older routers which do not use UPnP and need to have the ports configured manually. But again, this is a one off, not the majority of users. Which is fair to offer free support then but no point in bashing them.

I don’t remember saying that ALL support requests should or need to be a charged support requests.

But support is not free. And some types of problems can take excessive amounts of time to solve - only to discover it was caused by user error. Having all support requests free allows for abuse of the system. And that affects users that have true problems.

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If I had to contact support, it would be nice if I could push a button and get all the information I needed to send in right in front of me. Or even better, have a way of submitting a support call right from the Tablo programme.

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I agree, it would probably be a simple line to add.