Delving deeper into the Roku "Loading..Please Wait" issue

@TabloTV @TabloSupport

There’s really no point continuing this line of conversation, please refrain.

Frustration is high amongst everyone.

This is exactly the game you play. I never said either one of these things, you take what I say and interpret it the way you (for some unknown reason) want to, and then claim I said it. So point to where I said either one of these things (NOT something that you interpreted to MEAN that).

So we are providing evidence? You are the one with the issue, you are the one who from the very beginning of your issues has refused to consider the possibility that the issue might just be in your own network, Oh no, because your network is above all questioning. Maybe YOU should provide proof that you actually HAVE an issue. Or proof that you don’t work for Tivo or whatever else I might come up with. When I have an issue I say so, when I don’t I say so too. Other people have complained of issues with other channels too, but by your reasoning they must be lying, it is all a big conspiracy right?

I doubt that I said that either, but I can’t say for sure, mostly because I wouldn’t put it past you at this point.

The rest of your post is pretty much all off topic and I pretty much disagree with it all anyway, so I won’t waste any ones time (particularly mine) going point by point on it. Frankly I am not sure why you come here, I mean what is it that you want exactly? I personally tried to help you when you first started complaining but you were uncooperative and refused to accept anything that you didn’t want to hear, so what is someone supposed to do with that?

The real truth I think is tablo is not functioning “fully”. The real question is, how fully tablo functions for each and every one of us. Obviously, those lurking and posting here are a subset of however many tablo users there are, but I’d bet not in anyway much different. Of those posting here, by a very wide margin, are having troubles with their tablos. Most certainly there are more that don’t post then do and more without problems enough to bother to post here. But, to somehow think tablo is not having problems, or even minimal problems is simply not true.

So, tablo is having problems and a number of tablo’s users aren’t very happy right now. It is a safe bet, telling any of them, they are or their equipment is the problem isn’t going to resolve tablo’s problems, not to mention make it’s users base very much happier. Better way would be to isolate one problem at a time, fix it for all of us, move on the the next problem. The way to do this is by use of proper, time tested, software analysis, done by experts who do this every day for a living. Anything else, is monkey business. There are a few here who understand this and have so commented in their own ways. In most case, they were pretty well ignored by tablo, or at least not responded to by tablo. This in itself shows pretty well that tablo understands, but is unwilling to oblige for some reason. Money I expect is that reason. The unfortunate truth is most likely there isn’t any for this type of action. So, what tablo is left with is hunting and pecking their way through. Problem with that is, time. Tablo simply is out of time for too many things wrong and even getting more wrong it seems.

I for one wish tablo would find some way to do what must be done. I want to continue to use it, and for whatever reason, I seem to be one of those more lucky ones with a usable tablo. But, I have lost a few hundred hours of recordings twice so far. I have had to make use of a device which more or less seems to have a mind of its own on when to start or stop recordings. It decides if it’s recording, not the schedule I assign to it. And a bunch of other irritations I have accepted. Recently, I was blessed with a loss of current upgrade by some mysterious means. Upon letting tablo reinstall that update, I seem to have a fully functioning tablo for now. That pleases me greatly, but it does little to help others.

I personally would like tablo to actually brief us on what is happening at tablo hq. I would like to try to understand what it is they are doing and what it is they hope to come from it. I would like to be informed as to why they think they are having so much trouble with their device and what they are doing and going to do to resolve this for all of us.

But, that’s just me. It’s how I think and pretty much how I run my own companies.

Good luck to tablo. I hope it works. I wish good things for all of us as well.

-Rodger

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.

1 Like

[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.