I’d like to comment on your process. Building out a fix for an issue that people find to be infuriating/make your product unusable should be the priority. You can get everyone happy with your product and then you can extend your product. Don’t mix the two together. One can wait, the other one shouldn’t. I believe that is where the we feel you are being unresponsive. This problem has been going on since April and you have stated that you thought you had a fix 25 days ago. You held off releasing to add other features for other systems that weren’t seeing the problem. My wife is about ready to go back to cable. You are losing customers. Period. You need to get your priorities straight.
I really want to love this process but your lack of ability to fix your problems in a timely manner is making me wonder what will happen the next time you break something. How long will it take to get that fix out?
Please look at your development process and find a way to get important fixes out faster than your regular release cycle. This one change may be the difference between customers waiting around for the fix or those customers going to a competitor.
No. The point of the forums is to ask for help and to provide help. Tablo has responded to “us” and now unfortunately we have to wait. They are working hard to please you, no point in continually bashing them.
I’m not continuously bashing anyone. I’ve had this thing for over a year and it’s underperformed in the best of times. There is a known issue that many of us have had for months. It makes the device unusable. That’s UNUSABLE, not inconvenient. They should make it a priority to get our devices working rather than working on new features. Just because YOU do not have the issue, does not mean it is not widespread. I get annoyed at having it rubbed in my face that you by some lucky chance have a perfectly working device. You seem to be saying that since you do not have a problem, they should just ignore the rest of us and continue concentrating on features with the same priority as making the DVR usable for us. Yes, I want new features too. I don’t think this thing has ever had basic DVR features like multi-delete. But that said, I cannot even watch a show. So that is a bigger deal. I paid my $289+$100 too.
Tablo personally responded to you 5 days ago, and then they responded to this thread again 3 days ago. They are not ignoring you at all. Well, you may consider that ignoring. But yes I will start ignoring you and stop responding to your posts so I do not annoy you.
I hope the fix is released soon - till then we patiently wait.
I think you are missing the point here. Even though you claim it is not a global issue and that it is working for you (this is debatable, perhaps you are more tolerant to stutter) It is not working for properly for most. Many do not take the time to post here, rather they simply cancel their sub and sell the hardware.
Four of my co-workers have purchased Tablo’s to use with their FireTV’s and all four experience the stutter issue. I just canceled my sub and two of my coworkers have now as well. Tablo is losing business and that is the point. if they think they have a fix but they are holding back to release it with “other enhancements” then they are making a very poor business decision.
Did playback not work on any of your other devices to show you it works? Roku, phone, tablet? If you choose to return a Tablo bc of playback issues on one device, so be it. But they have said they are working on a fix - it would be poor business practice to ignore the issue and pretend it doesn’t exist but they have acknowledged it and are working on it. I think that’s better support than you get from most companies in this specific OTA industry.
I bought the Tablo to use specifically and exclusively with my 4 Firetv’s. The Tablo may be a fine device but it is not a viable option on the FireTV in its current state.
Also, I did test it on the PC and there is a strange bug that even though I set manual recordings for the EDT time zone, the tablo doesn’t record in that time zone so everything I try to record starts 2 hours late.
They’ve unfortunately lost you as a customer - I’m sorry you couldn’t wait for a fix. Maybe they introduced the new Fire TV app too early, but many more people would have faulted them and likely bailed too if they didn’t release the app when they did. It’s one of those situations, damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
They’ve done a good job of being proactive with bugs, but in any tech business, you can’t please all. Everything has a different priority for everyone.
@Jcat, is the Tablo located in the Eastern Time Zone?
I live in Central time, and I admit the manual scheduling gets wonky if you change the time zone. At 5:45 PM Central, I set up a manual recording for 5:50-6:20. But if I change my time zone to Eastern, the recording looks like it will record from 7:50-8:20, instead of 6:50-8:20. If I change it to Mountain, the recording shows 3:50-4:20 instead of 4:50-5:20. And if I change it to Pacific, it shows 2:50-3:20 instead of 3:50-4:20.
I assume that if your Tablo is set up in a time zone other than Central, it will do manual recordings properly (I will try to test it as well), but for now, always look at the top part of the manual recording after it has been created. It will show the time of the recording based on your “home time”.
Yes it is in the Eastern Time Zone. I am not sure how to actually select the time zone though? I enetered my zipcode and the time in the top right is my current time but I do not see anywhere to actually select a time zone
There isn’t anything on the Tablo to select a time zone, but the zip code should handle it. When you create a manual recording, what is shown at the very top after the name you have given it?
On mine, it says “Record “test” on Channel 2-1 (WKRN-DT) on Sun, Jun 14 from 5:50 to 6:20 CDT”
Does yours say “EDT” or something else?
(Note, the FireTv does have its own time zone setting that should be set to use it).
Good. I just wanted to be sure. Unfortunately, that rules out about as much troubleshooting as I can do.
I definitely some weirdness in the times if you are in a different time zone from your Tablo, but if you are in the same time zone, I don’t know why it would be failing. I would try to submit a ticket to see if the Tablo support folks can help.
@theuser86@jcat I’d like to follow up on my earlier comments and give some context as well.
I am a software developer. I have been in the industry for 20 years and have worked on successful and failed products. The one thing that makes a product successful is that the customer is using it and loves it, in that order. If the customer can’t use it then it should be all hands on deck" until we resolve that issue. I can’t delight a customer that can’t even use the product.
Here is how this should have been handled.
Acknowledge that there is an issue.
Determine what the problem is.
Notify the users that you are working on a fix
Fix the problem, including testing
Release a fix for that problem.
Incorporate the fix into future versions so that you do not cause a regression bug.
PROFIT!
Unfortunately, they decided to swap #5 and #6. This means that there is more opportunity for current customer to leave. Each person that leaves is someone that will not speak well of your product. That bad word of mouth is more devastating than a bad review since it comes from a trusted source. In fact, this entire thread is probably causing folks to not purchase a Tablo if they are doing any kind of due diligence on this product.
I don’t need an update to the Tablo device itself. I need an update to the FireTV app. That could have been done as a hotfix unless the problem is the communication channel between the Tablo and the FireTV which needs an update to both apps to mitigate the issue. Since I haven’t head anything from Tablo about the root cause of the issue, I’ll assume that it is simply a FireTV app issue.
As I stated in my earlier post, if the Tablo team’s development and release processes can’t handle this kind of hotfix then they really need to rethink their process. This is Software Development 101 and can be solved with a few off-the-shelf tools and well-known branching and release processes.
If this isn’t a development or release process issue but rather a management decision to roll this all up then I’d suggest looking back at your Management 101 books that says you can’t keep customers if you can’t keep them happy.
You seem to be the only one having no issues with playback on your fire tv stick in this thread. I would like mine to run extra smooth like yours.
Can you please tell us about your setup so we can try to emulate it and get the same great results you are experiencing? What components are you using from antenna to tv? Are you using the 2-tuner or 4-tuner tablotv? Are you running the 2.1.30 firmware?
What settings are you using on the tablotv? Are you using any special settings on your fire stick?
Is there anything you can suggest based on your experience?
Fire TV Stick on Wireless N 5 GHz WiFi on TP-Link TL-WDR3600 router.
Tablo Dual tuner with the newest firmware v2.1.30, Tablo is hard wired to router
WD 320 GB internal SATA HDD, Vantec NexStar USB 3.0 HDD enclosure [HDD is powered by separate power adapter]
Tablo app on Fire TV Stick (newest version)
EagleStar Pro OTA amplified antenna, split with a 1x2 splitter before the Tablo to feed HDTV and Tablo