Hey folks - we realize everyone is frustrated but there’s no reason to nitpick eachother.
If you want the latest update you can see a message from our CEO here: A Message from the CEO of Nuvyyo
Here you go, again, Troll:
Your post I quoted above shows it very clearly.
As my mother once said, a good fibber needs a good memory. You seem to have some selective recall here. I am thankful that all of this has been documented. It makes it easy to disprove your bogus denials and shows your latest statement of “I wouldn’t put it past you entirely” to be again dismissive, altogether empty, and almost comically wrong
Any chance that you guys (@RetiredEngineer and @philsoft) could exchange email addresses and then take this offline? It is not shedding as much light as you might think for the rest of the Community.
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+1
The forum also has private messaging available.
Rodger and others here,
My apology to this forum for acting aggresively here, but I am as anxious to see this set of problems solved as anyone, and take strong exceptions when either my motives or my technical reasoning are called into question.
At risk of being flamed, I wanted to very briefly offer you my credentials and my suggestions, not to seek praise or any thanks, but merely to clarify my intentions here. I have no stake in Tablo other than as a user and as a retired engineer and manager who can bring some insights to a problem with hopes of solving it. Such has been my career of 50+ years.
I also want to establish WHY I think Tablo is at fault, and HOW I think that Tablo can take steps to improve things. I have sold consulting services for thousands of dollars per day, but offer this input with no expectations of any payback other than a truly working Tablo.
In the way of background, I bring 2 degrees in electrical and computer engineering, a Masters in Business Administration, 3 FCC Commercial Broadcasting Licenses including First Class, and 5 amateur ham licenses up to the highest class dating back to the 1950s. I have worked in broadcast engineering, built and put a televsion station on the air, and performed and managed many dozens of software and hardware projects, first as an engineer, and later as a project manager. I eventually managed several hundred engineers and programmers delivering several million lines of code, retiring as a Division Vice President of a Fortune 100 aerospace company most of you have heard of. I have taught at the local university (student population 34,000) and enjoy particularly expertise in systems engineering and RF engineering. To this day my hobbies include electronics design, programming, and especially video, and I have about $55K of current video, editing, 4K UHD, servers, projection, ham, and electronics instrumentation including oscilliscopes, signal generators, etc. to keep me occupied in retirement and educate my grandchildren.
I believe Tablo is responsible here for two basic reasons.
First and foremost, there are now over 2500+ Roku channel apps for the same number of Roku channels, and literally 13 million or more Roku users. The problems we have been seeing on the Tablo DO NOT, and I repeat again, DO NOT show up with any significance on other channels. If you would take the time to look at the Internet and especially the Roku developer forums, the appearance of any topics related to fast forward reboots particularly, are extremely rare. I have seen a total of 3 channels each with one complaint.
The temptation to affiliate this issue as being a Roku problem is patently obvious, since the Roku box, afterall, is the thing which crashes.
The RIGHT question to ask would be, however, why don’t 2497 other channels crash the Roku? And why aren’t Netflix, HBO, and other extremely large consumer populations complaining about their Roku crashes? There are many, many millions of users who are satisfied.
The answer is that those Roku channel app developers who screw up create crashing apps. Those who write code correctly have apps which run without FFReboots.
The second reason is even more basic than the first. If Roku truly has the bug which causes these crashes, isn’t there still an obligation for Tablo to understand how to circumvent this with recoding to the revised update which avoids this crash? Clearly (2497) other channels have figured it out. Should Tablo sit back as they did for over 5 months saying, we are waiting for Roku to fix this? Absolutely not !!! This is terrible, non customer focused head in the sand. It disrespects the investments and risks all of us were willing to take to try an untested product like Tablo. It shows an utter lack of taking some leadership in making this problem disappear.
The two reasons above are not the only reasons I believe Tablo is responsible.
Since the day I plugged in my new Tablo a year ago up until just a few minutes ago, the list of recordings on my Tablo and my iPhone have never agreed. The connections have never been solid remotely. The Roku returns to the Home desktop when I hit the Tablo button some of the time, starting Tablo app but then quitting. I could go on and on. The current Roku code is badly flawed and shows it in many ways.
The number of threads in this forum with issues very clearly shows a software development project in trouble. More bugs are being created than being fixed.
And finally, I have to really wonder why the offical Tablo channel app for the Roku has been untouched since February 2015. Are we saying that it is finished and working properly? Hardly! It did not work properly in February 2015 and it does not work properly now. Some of my earlier complaints and observationws go back to bugs discovered a year ago, still unfixed, unacknowledged,and most annoying in total. The Preview channel solves none of them,
Finally, I feel that Tablo has done a very poor job of communicating. As anyone in management or especially in publuic relations will tell you, the worst thing to do in any crisis or problem is to stay silent. I personally have been astonished at the 5 month denial, followed by the 2 month offer to send crash reports to Roku follwed by the fairly recent acknowledgement of issues with a nebulous claim this problem is being worked.
Eight months is far too long to be passive.
I suggest that:
Tablo postpones / stops all new feature work on the Roku to focus exclusively on getting the current version fixed.
Tablo hires an independent software verification and validation company to do code walk-throughs, validation of designs, verification of code compliance, and define software quality assurance standards.
Tablo hires a Software Quality Assurance Manager reporting directly to the VP of Engineering or CEO with full responsibility for software testing and delivered software quality.
For the above, staffing should be provided which is ‘egoless’, a term used to ensure that a person does not get to review or test code which they have had any prior involvement in. Needless to say, those with very strong credentials in Brightscript and recent Roku channel app development should be sought out and hired.
I appreciate that Roku is but one of several supported players, but it is, by a huge margin, the largest present plus potential customer base, and is clearly a very weak area for Tablo currently.
A status report should be developed and distributed to all parties, on a periodic basis, with completion time and manpower tracking. An abridged version of this repoprt should be made available online to interested users to indicate work in progress and status.
Optionally, an employee incentive program which rewards bug discovery and bug elimination should be established and administered through the Software Quality Assurance Manager office / budget.
Further considerations:
Diagnostic code visible to the user, the Tablo support group, or both to better instrument what is actually going on. The current Tablo offers absolutely no visibility into its working paramaters and failure modes.
A more open architecture allowing the wealth of expertise in the user base to complement the Tablo team, rather than wasting enormous time discussing mostly irrelevant topics like cooling/thermal, router and network confounding problems, RF / EMI, etc.
Perhaps a dedicated Tablo player at a relatively low price which allows HDMI output and remote control, putting the entire end-to-emd Tablo code base under your company control, and avoiding altogether the reliance on 3rd party updates and changes.
This is just a start, issued with good intentions, with hope of some implementation.
Larry
I will post this request above in the Open Letter from the Tablo CEO thread with hopes that he will read and act upon some or all of the suggestions.
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[cross posting from: Roku 4 - Cycles "Loading, Please Wait" every 30-60 seconds]
Found a solution to this problem. I made these changes to my wifi (same device as the router), and it has not happened since (even though Roku 4 is plugged via ethernet):
- Bluetooth Coexistence -> changed from “Enabled” to “Disabled”
- 802.11n Preamble -> changed from “Green Field” to “Mixed Mode”
- WMM -> changed from “Auto” to “Enabled”
** No ACK -> Disable
** APSD Mode -> Enable
The above is VERY different from
So like I said YOUR INTERPRETATION
Shouldn’t someone with your background ask a differerent question before asking that one. Namely “Is the ffw button used with the other 2497 channels?” You don’t ffw programming when there are no commercials. How many movies do you watch on hbo or netflix where you ffw through 20 minutes of video every hour? How many channels that do have commercials let you ffw through them? You’re basing your conclusion under the premise that 2500 channels are used the same way 1 is. I would have expected someone touting the background you have to address such a simple observation. Honestly, focusing so much on blaming tablo while ignoring that the roku ffw function is just not used much on channels with no (or unskippable) commercials undermines your credibility.
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All 2500+ channels are viewed by people who skip content, go back to review content, pause then restart content after a bathroom break with a rewind or fast forward, etc. Sport fans will know this as would parents of kids with typical attention defecit button pushing. With over 13 million viewers on Roku and 2500+ channels, PLEASE SHOW ME THEIR FAST FORWARD REBOOT COMPLAINTS. Even if only one 10th of 1% of the users reported an issue, there should be tens of thousands between April and now.
Where are they?
Have there been any complaints about rebooting since the Roku firmware upgrade?
I definitely encountered the reboot issue using the early beta 7.x firmware, and on multiple apps as well. When the final beta was pushed, the problem went completely away.
I can’t guarantee that it will go away for everyone, but Roku, not Tablo, was responsible for the fix.
My Roku 4 with 7.x hasn’t rebooted…but I have also not used it much for Tablo due to performance issues (primarily frequent Loading Please Wait).
None of my Roku 3’s have been updated yet…
I’ve always noticed that the “Please Wait” happens more during prime time, while the delays with the DVR becomes extended with the amount of recordings in the hard drive. People have mentioned that a lot of these issues were not present on previous versions of the software. I wouldn’t know because I purchased the Tablo just recently. I believe that maybe there is a back-end interaction that may be taking place now, that was not there before. Nielsen in off the tracks, as it pertains to digital viewership data, and third party companies are now becoming more involved with collecting the data on their side. This is especially difficult with OTT and OTA devices. However, I asked once about this, to see if this was causing delays with the Tablo, but I was informed that it was not the case. The fact that the “Please Wait” happens more in prime time, with a fast internet connection, lends me to believe there is some sort of back end problem, which is not evident with other Roku apps.
In my experience the LPW message does not seem to be related to prime time, it happens a lot also even when watching recorded programs after midnight (when Tablo was not recording or streaming to other devices). I also believe it has nothing to do with internet connection as the streaming data is coming directly from the Tablo, unless the Tablo is at a remote location. If the network is to be blamed, then it’s the home network instead of internet (even though I have Tablo and Roku both hardwired to gigabit network, LPW still happens a lot).
At midnight? Do you live in the east coast? Remember that prime times could be similar, but they likely take place in different zones or countries. When prime time is ending on the east coast, it is already in full swing in the middle part of the country, and maybe just starting in the west coast.That all has to be weighed in with the load on the servers.
I’m from CST. It happens even when watching a show at 2am in the morning, unless that’s still consider prime time…
And again, correct me if I’m wrong, when watching live or recorded programs, I believe the streaming data is coming solely from the Tablo, and not from any server outside the house. Not sure those servers would have impact on playback of a recorded show.
Yes, I believe that the DVR side is just reading the disk itself. Maybe creating the preview images that you see when rewinding or fast forwarding (although I have seen now some recordings displaying only the playback tracker, without images), but it may be possible that it is gathering what’s on hand, with the recordings, to log it on the opposite side as well. If that were the case, that interaction could be touching the front and back end as well. Who knows?
I understand there may be handshaking and program guide data download going on at any time, but I really don’t believe those would cause LPW at all. It’s possible that the latest Tablo firmware may have uncovered some hidden bugs in Roku and hopefully they can work together to resolve or figure out a workaround solution.
[quote=“RetiredEngineer, post:113, topic:4337, full:true”]
All 2500+ channels are viewed by people who skip content, go back to review content, pause then restart content after a bathroom break with a rewind or fast forward, etc. Sport fans will know this as would parents of kids with typical attention defecit button pushing. With over 13 million viewers on Roku and 2500+ channels, PLEASE SHOW ME THEIR FAST FORWARD REBOOT COMPLAINTS. Even if only one 100th of 1% of the users reported an issue,there should be tens of thousands between April and now.
Where are they?
[/quote]A typical hour broadcast has 18 minutes of commercials. The ffw button on roku moves 10 seconds a click. Are you really trying to tell me that users of 2500 roku channels click the ffw button 108 clicks every hour? How small is your bladder that you have to pause a program to pee 108 times an hour? Can you give me some examples of channels where ffw is used 108 times an hour? From the times i’ve seen it crash the roku, it was never ever on the first click. Or even the first several clicks. It’s caused when using the ffw button a lot more frequently than you use it on other channels. So infrequently on other channels that when it happens, you’re not likely to report it on a roku forum. I’ve had rokus since 2011 and they’ve crashed numerous times. But I didn’t even know there were roku forums until a few months ago. When i’ve gone to roku’s page for support, I don’t recall there even being a link to the forums. So, infrequent crashes combined with hidden forums equals not a lot of reports when there is a problem.
If I can make roku crash using other channels, would you blame the all the channels I can make crash? I stopped using my roku 4 because it kept crashing and I wasn’t even using the tablo channel on it.
Edit: I see the roku forums have 89,676 registered users. Pretty small sample size of 13 million users, wouldn’t you say? 0.6% of those users registered on those forums. And you’re basing conclusions off of how many bug reports you see there? Come on. You have to see how unscientific that is.
Complaints would show up not just on Roku’s forum but on EVERY forum where channel viewers congregate. When HBO Go had problems on AppleTV, we voiced our concerns on the HBO user community website.
Once again, can you show me evidence of other Roku channel users with reboots when navigating fast forward?
Obviously frequency of using fast forward and reverse directly correlates with probability this type of crash occurs, but other channels among the 2500 have higher frequency useage also. Hell, I can play and skip back and forth endlessly using the IDENTICAL RIPPED TABLO FILES played on the Roku PLEX channel and have never, ever seen a reboot ever.
Let’s see some other evidence of the other 13 million users and their fast forward crashes…your opinion is valued but actual proof would be really important to SHOW ACTUAL Roku users with this same problem.
By the way, if you think I have some blind-spot with Roku firmware, I will readily state that their firmware and quality assurance combined with the customer service is totally abysmal. I have numerous complaints, mostly firmware related, and think they are terrible to deal with and have very weak control both of their platform and especially of developer apps. Tablo has yet to impress me favorably in how they desl with their own Tablo issues, however, and my 1 year ownership has had, since day 1 last Novrmber 2014, missing recordings, icons which can not be deleted, differing recordings in one view compared to another, recordings appearing on iOS and Fire but missing on Roku, LPW buffer issues, connection issues, several sudden needs to do Tablo factory resets for no apparent reason, and even a dozen or more unplayable recordings showing up
for dates several months in the FUTURE which forced yet another factory reset. So they are both crummy hacks, yet Roku HAS, to its credit, done 5 firmware updates, none appearing to make things worse (with the possible exception of April 2015 V6.2 which may indeed be the actual true source of FFReboots). In the same time period of 1 year, Tablo has released pretty previews, but their channel app on Roku and firmware are MORE BUG FILLED now and still posess essentially the ssme problems they had a year ago. And they have offered ZERO evidence of providing any workaround to reduce, instrument, record, prevent, or otherwise mitigate their growing list of issues, essentially disowning, ignoring, and treating bugs as if their users were the cause. If I can watch and scrub 4K 100 Mbit/sec UHD video as well as Roku, AppleTV, DLNA, Seagate Home Theater HD+, SageTV HD, and sll other content with my router, switches, and CAT-6 cabling, I just do not want to hear about my network causing FFReboots.
Larry
That is odd because on August 25th you said
I agree entirely. My “5th month rant”, as I previously called it, has now ended. I look forward to the time when I will, just as I did in ny first ownership months 1-5 of Tablo, have zero complaints about Tablo and no need to post. Hopefully soon,
As can be seen Here