Having used the Tablo for just over a week now, I feel compelled to offer up my suggestions for the road map (some of which have been stated already, but I’m saying them again since they’re important). When picking priorities, I like to think about what would prevent me from recommending the Tablo to someone – and let’s be honest, I’d certainly have reservations right now since it’s little rough around the edges. The hardware seems great and the concept is very appealing to the cord cutter, so I think there’s a lot of potential, but the software definitely needs more refinement to get to that appliance-like “it just works” level.
I live in the Google ecosystem for the most part – Nexus 5, Nexus 7, and Chromecast, so I can only speak to the setup I’ve been using. I also have a Surface Pro 3 and another Windows machine, which I use the web app from.
Here we go…
- Stability. That’s #1. I’ve seen freezing on the Chromecast with 1080p recording enabled. Sounds like you guys are onto that already. When I first got my Tablo, it wouldn’t give me the update to the newest firmware or download any guide data. After a reset, it did prompt me to update and then downloaded guide data correctly. It’s been fine since, but it didn’t make for a good first impression.
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Buffering and load times are too long, detracting heavily from the user experience. The process of getting live TV on the screen and changing channels just has to be faster. Some of the syncing and initialization can undoubtedly be either sped up or performed in background.
Probably more critical is the buffering when switching to a channel. I’ve used the network-connected HDHomeRun with Windows Media Center in the past and changing channels on that takes a couple seconds. It’s not exactly apples to apples, but this needs to be a whole lot faster, even if it risks introducing minor skips on sub-par networks.
- When watching live TV, progress should be shown relative to the length of the program you’re watching (or otherwise based around time slots). It’s very difficult to navigate forward and backward when the bar is constantly moving on you – and it just looks weird.
- Follow Google Cast guidelines (for Chromecast). The icon isn’t positioned correctly, which is confusing, and some aspects of the experience are off. Via the web app, switching channels shouldn’t require you to hit the cast button again (after waiting for it to buffer) – it’s very tedious (and not the way other apps work).
- Phone apps. Adapting the tablet apps to work on phones shouldn’t be very difficult (certainly not on Android) and would be a huge again in overall experience. If I grab my tablet, I can go to the app. If I grab my phone – oh wait – there’s no app, let me go to the web page. And then there’s no ongoing notification for a Chromecast session like there is with the app. It just makes things a little disjointed.
- Add vertical mode in Android app. People usually hold their Nexus 7 vertically, so it’s weird to open it and be forced horizontal. Forcing horizontal is fine during video playback (I think Netflix does that), but it should work in any direction during general navigation.
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Improve general UX. There’s a lot of polishing that needs to be done.
On the web app, the way the arrows work when using the guide and switching between live TV channels is not intuitive. The channel numbers/times scroll semi-independently from the programming. Really, the visual appearance of the grid and text could use some improvement. The text also adjusts laggedly when getting clipped, which looks funny.
You have to click on the channel number itself to start watching – there’s no option from within the program block other than record, which is confusing and left even this tech geek scratching his head at first trying to figure out how to watch live TV. To a non-techie, it’s also not clear what the red flashing channel numbers mean when you never explicitly started recording anything.
And don’t show “Establishing Web Socket Connection” and any techno-babble during startup. Just tell the user it’s connecting to the Tablo (with indeterminate progress). Don’t segregate into steps.
It’s all about the little things.
- Fix jarring experience when web app connection is lost. If I have the web app up and my computer or phone goes to sleep, if I take it out of sleep, it will pop me out of the guide or whatever I was doing – I’m guessing only when the web socket is disconnected – to show that it’s re-establishing the connection. Ideally, this should happen in background without changing the page. And more importantly, it shouldn’t kill the Chromecast session if in use. Had that happen several times and it’s really frustrating.
- Record end padding time. This is very important to sports fans. Needs to prompt on sporting event to add time, but by default 30 mins extra.
- Support AC3. This one’s very important to me, though honestly, I doubt it’s something that matters to the majority of people.
- Support multiple web browsers. Windows phone and tablet users are SOL without IE support. Plenty of people I’m sure are forced to use Chrome when they don’t for anything else, though I’m not one of them. I imagine the effort required to do this isn’t that high versus the return though. I’d still rank stability and UX improvements above this.
As a software developer, I know how hard it is to get all this stuff working right on multiple platforms/configurations – especially with limited resources and all. I think you’ve got a great start and I’m excited to see how much better Tablo gets going forward.
