A lot of us here are NFL fans, and being able to reliably watch NFL football is an important selling point if the Tablo is going to succeed. I want to know how everyone felt about it, and if you have any tips for making the experience more enjoyable.
I didn’t get a chance to watch any live NFL this Sunday, but I did watch different parts of my recording of the Titans game via the iPad. I was able to skip around to all the scoring plays pretty easily using the bar at the top which shows where you are in the recording. The picture quality and motion were terrific. I will try it on my Roku sometime tonight.
I did risk a little by using the default show recording instead of a manual recording with extra time built in. It worked fine for me (game finished with about 15 minutes to spare), but hopefully the ability to add time to a recording will be added at some point soon.
I just hooked up my 4 tuner last night. I have a splitter that runs directly to my tv and the tablo. honestly, the tablo has a slight digital look to it compared to the feed directly to my tv. the image quality is sharp with the tablo, but the motion is not quite as smooth as the direct feed. that being said, I can live with it and hope they can tweak something in the future to improve it.
I agree with brg88tx. Picture quality artifacts and motion blur are noticeable (on 60" Panasonic plasma) as compared to TWC or direct but acceptable at $100/month savings. Other than that, very pleased with the experience to far.
(Tablo 4 tuner; Amazon Basics indoor amplified antennae; Western Digital 2TB HD; recording at 1080p; Motorola 5Ghz router; iPad via AppleTV)
I really enjoyed the games especially the Falcons v Saints. Picture was clear and the allotted default time worked perfectly. However, when I watched the Broncos v Colts, I didn’t have the additional buffer of time factored in. Luckily, when I reached the end of the recorded time, I switched to live tv and caught the last couple of plays. I need to learn how to add in more time vs. defaults. The only other “issue” is with my remote. Sometimes when I use fast fwd to bypass the commercials, Tablo disengages and “drops” me out of the program. I then have to reconnect to Tablo, reselect the program I was watching and try to recall what time interval I was at in order to get back to the accurate place in the program. I utilize replay through Apple TV and not sure if there’s a glitch with Tablo or Apple TV or both?
I watched NFL pretty much all day Sunday and Sunday night and everything worked great! The only thing I really miss is the 30 second skip on my ROKU. I watched a lot of the Denver game on DVR so I missed being able to skip 30 seconds quickly between snaps. I do know I could have used the 30 second skip feature on my IPad.
@blkdesigns You can create manual recordings by navigating to the Scheduled tab. Here, you can schedule recordings by date/time/channel/duration, so you can add extra time to the recording if you think it may go a little long. We intend to add some ‘smart recording’ type features soon so that you don’t need to do this as a work around.
In regards to you FF/RW issue on the Apple TV, can you try rebooting the Apple TV? We’ve noticed this works out quite a few kinks.
Overall the experience was really good. I watched NCAA and NFL on my Roku both live and recorded and it worked really well. Great quality, no loading issues. I miss the easy 30 sec skip for the Roku as well. It was a whole lot easier to fine tune your fast forwarding and rewinding. I also am excited for when we get an option to add time to live programming. I know I can set a manual recording for the time being.
The iPhone web app does not work well for me when watching recorded shows. Live TV seems to work really well but when I watch a recorded football game the fast forward bar only show a total show length of 50 seconds when it is really 4 hours. When you get to the end of the 50 seconds it adds another 30 seconds and so on. If I wanted to fast forward to the middle of the game I couldn’t. Its a little hard to explain but Ill probably abandon watching recorded shows on the iPhone (not that I use it that much) and stick with the Roku.
All in all I love this product and would be in a world of hurt without it! Thanks for all your hard work Tablo! I am sure you guys can work the minor kinks out.
I started watching Sunday Night Football on NBC an hour after it started. I was recording the show, but wasn’t really interested in watching it from the begining. I just wanted to watch it Live. On my laptop I went to the Guide and clicked on the NBC station. It took me to the beginning of the recording instead of just showing me Live TV. I also could not move the search bar to the right at all as the web thought it was on Live TV, but it wasn’t. I tried this a few times and got the same result each time. Is there another way around this or am I doing something wrong?
1. When browsing via the Sports section, there’s no easy way to add time to a recording I schedule. I have to go to the timetable instead and figure out which program airs after the game I’m trying to record and set that to record too, or otherwise do a manual recording.
2. Would be nice to be able to set a certain team’s games to automatically record. Maybe with a keyword of the team’s name, or something?
1. Will be addressed in the next firmware release, and 2. may already be covered in some exciting ‘smart recording’ logic we have coming in that release as well. In any case, I’ll pass this along to the team.
@jharkins Hm, that's weird. Are you using the Chrome mobile app or the Safari app?
Looks like I cant recreate my issue now. Works good on both Safari and Chrome. The recording shows up as 3+hrs long and I can move to wherever I want easily. Thanks for the help!
I was disappointed with many moments watching football this weekend.
Running Windows 8.1, Chrome Browser on an i7 4000 generation plugged in laptop connected to a Toshiba TV via 10’ long HDMI cable. Laptop is connected via my no-one-else using home network (802.11 n).
Disappointments include:
1) The NFL recording recorded live (checking Live TV during the games I had the red blinking active channel) and watched while recording, but none of the games i didn’t watch while recording show up ijn my recording list - my 2TB drive is about 1/2 full now. Other regular scheduled recording continue to update but some college and all NFL games are gone even though they were all in the record schedule. BOOO! Hope it gets fixed fast. I’ve rebooted everything and checked for updates to all the things that can be updated (BIOS, OS, Browser & Tablo).
2) The “while recording” experience fortunately allows me to scan back to the beginning of the recording and then use the controls in the browser to skip voice over and commercials. However, many of the most action filled scenes got rather choppy - long runs, kick-offs, stuff with fast motion I assume. Yuk. I wasn’t home Thursday night, but see the issue of keeping a recording is still there - no game although when I checked in the morning it was scheduled.
Still a fan, but can’t recommend to my friends until I see an improvement here and if my wife misses any NCIS lord help us.
@tcduncan - You shouldn’t be missing any recordings. I would suggest placing a ticket with @TabloSupport so they can investigate. It may be that your hard drive is experiencing disconnects.
I was watching Sunday Night Football live and had it set to record. On my Roku when it hit the end of the recording window (not the end of the game), it threw me out of the live channel back to the menus. It was a very frustrating 3 minutes to get back to the game, but thankfully I didn’t miss that much.
