Excessive number of episodes a problem - ideas?

I’m sure the answer to this will ultimately be “don’t do that”, but I thought I’d check first…

I noticed over the weekend that an excessive number of episodes of an individual TV show causes problems. Specifically Doctor Who. I have had my Tablo recording Doctor Who off of Retro TV here in Dallas since I’ve had it, and it’s recorded nearly all the available episodes in syndication on the original run of the show from 1963-1989.

Problem is there’s so many of them now the apps struggle to even display them. It wasn’t a problem until very recently when my episode count I noticed over the weekend reached 424 (see attached). I have apps for the thing on several devices and platforms (Fire TV 4k stick, Apple TV 4k 2nd gen & 3rd gen), as well as on iOS & iPadOS. All of them exhibit some version of the same problem which is they can never display the list of episodes. Some just outright crash the app, some just struggle to display anything, some can display some of it, but actually selecting one to watch it is a problem. The Tablo itself is a 4th gen 4 tuner model using firmware 2.2.53. The episodes are stored on an external HD (WD Elements, 5TB). All the respective devices are up to date - no further OS available.

I’m guessing this is down to the sheer number of episodes it has there - currently at 424. I don’t see any way out of this, except going in to delete them all. Is there anything that can be done to alleviate this and allow the thing to actually display them (short of removing some)? I kind of liked having the entire run of the show available.

Tkx.

Kinda had a similar problem… with my Roku’s. When I hit about 3-4TB of recordings the APP failed to open.

I was told there is a DB that stores all this data. When it gets too large, it needs more CPU/Mem to scan it.

I factory reset the Tablo (once my wife was done with her shows) and reformatted the drive and it worked. Now I’m trying to get back to that 3-4TB mark to see if it happens again.

However, I bought an ONN 4k box and it worked fine the whole time. I assumed it had more horsepower than my Roku Ultra (2018). Just food for thought.

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Would you consider reaching out to support: https://tablotv.com/support/#contact ? They may be able to help.

If you do, please DM us your ticket number.

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I’ve been fighting this issue of duplicate recordings on my Gen 4 Tablo from day one. Yes, I do have don’t record dips checked. I’ve received the standard blah blah blah from the techies but they don’t seem interested. I’ve never had this problem on my Legacy unit.

I have done both things.