I’m really sorry to hear about your frustrating experience with Tablo and their customer service. It sounds like you’ve been through a lot trying to resolve these issues. Before giving up, you might want to consider exploring other options to address your TV and streaming needs.
On a different note, if you’re looking to enhance your career, you might want to check out the Microsoft Certified Azure Data Engineer Associate certification. Sometimes, taking a step back and focusing on personal or professional growth can help alleviate the stress from technology-related problems.
I gave up weeks ago.
Any “other option” would be better than using this piece of crap.
And the only thing worse than the product is their brutal customer service.
On a scale of 1 to 10 the entire experience was a -26.
Perhaps if you hadn’t sold us junk, you wouldn’t be dealing with a “higher than usual” call volume.
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totally agree, and if you ALWAYS have “higher than usual” call volume, then that is now USUAL, not unusual
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I thought it was common knowledge that Roku is very problematic… Go get a Firestick 4K Max on Amazon…They are on sale for $39. It should solve your problems…if not refunds are quick and easy…
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I was using a Fire Stick 4K MAX last night, and found that the Chromecast with Google TV 4K had less glitches than the Fire Stick. So if one were buying a new streaming device specifically for the new Tablo, I’d go with that. Seems to be consistently best of the devices that I’ve tried now.
The Walmart Onn Google TV streaming box at $20 may be as good as the Chromecast 4K, don’t know, haven’t tried it. But it could well be :-).
I’m surprised you didn’t return the product after all of your struggles. I’m assuming it held some benefits and worked at least enough to warrant the money spent.
What were you able to figure out that might help others that are experiencing the same frustration you had way back in October?
I did return it.
it had no benefits.
So what input can you really offer to others in their struggle now?
Without a product to compare the things that have changed and improved, you really don’t know how things are going.
It’s unfortunate you didn’t have success with your DVR, but to continue berating a company whose product you no longer own is unnecessary.
The “input” I’m “offering” is to tell people to dump this horrible product.
I found zero redeeming about it.
Sorry should I check with you in the future before posting?
You “dumped” your product before any of the major firmware or app updates were even available.
I understand your frustration and returning the product because you’re unsatisfied, but thousands of users are not having an issue with it.
So many people offered various solutions to which you did not seem to try (like trying the channel scan on a different device.). Many things could have been the cause of your issue but it’s too late to find out now.
I really am sorry that things didn’t work out for you. It’s not a perfect product and there are flaws – but with each update it has improved (December’s Roku app update excluded).
You don’t have to check in with me for anything you do. Some of us are trying to help other Tablo users – of which you no longer are.
You’re spending so much extra energy not only keeping a forum account to a product you don’t own, but replying to others comments. I have to wonder if deep down you’re hoping you’ll see a post about how great the Tablo is getting, giving you the perfect reason to try it again…
Actually, no, I get an email every time SOMEONE ELSE responds to this topic.
If the product is so great why are so many people responding to this topic?
And why do you care at all?
Do you work for the company?
I WISH the product was good.
Clearly it’s not, which everyone here but you seems to realize.
And if you actually read my previous posts, you would’ve seen that I did try EVERY suggestion that others made, and none of them worked.
Oh but I did love your defense:
“It’s not a perfect product and there are flaws – but with each update it has improved (December’s Roku app update excluded).“
Talk about damning with faint praise.
I don’t remember that in the advertising when they charged me full price for a POS that they KNOW doesn’t work.
There are 2 major pieces of the Tablo 4th gen. They are the hardware and software. The hardware I think is very good and the software is a work in progress but has the potential to be very good. There are lots of things I really like about the software and how it works. However there are some software issues which are the freezes and reboots that are causing us Users a lot of frustration. (I hope these are software and not hardware)
Overall I think Tablo 4th Gen is a good product and I don’t know that there are any DVRs out there that don’t come with some problems. I also own an Amazon Recast and it also has issues even with a big company with lots of money like Amazon behind it!
However I can see where some people expect it to be perfect out of the box and give up when those expectations are not met. Perfect out of the box is not a reality with DVRs these days.
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I have been using Roku’s for years, and they are not problematic. The legacy Tablo Roku channel doesn’t have these problems and I have used dozens of channels none of which have been as bad as this new Tablo channel. I would guess that you have never owned a Roku. BTW, if Firesticks are anything like Prime’s bloated, clunky Roku channel, then I’ll pass on anything Amazon.
“so many people” is not everyone or this would be flooded with thousands of users and just a few dozen. And most of them seem to be the same 3-4 users over and over again in multiple threads.
I don’t work for the company, but I care because it’s a good product and continues to improve. Your four month old opinion really doesn’t mean a thing when so many things have changed and become better in numerous ways. I had a few major issues with my first two Tablos. Know what most of the problems were? ME. What I was using for external, what type of network I had them on, how I had my network split. There will always be hiccups along the way with app updates and releases – you can’t test for every possible situation. For example, how many Roku models are there? How many Android versions are there that run on innumerable different combinations of hardware?
If you tried EVERY suggestion, it wasn’t made clear. I didn’t see a response to a few, but it could have been implied later when you replied to another user. (The channel scan on a different device, to me it never came across that you were using something other than your Roku – I apologize if I misunderstood.)
There are no perfect products. If there were, we would only ever buy one. We wouldn’t have 200 brands of TVs with 10 different operating systems. Microsoft, Apple or Name-Your-Distro-of-Linux would be the only OS we’d use. AppleTV/Roku/AmazonFirestick/GoogleChromeCast – why are there so many? EVERY thing has its flaws. How much can you blame on one product over another? If you never tried anything but a Roku TV, you can’t say where the blame lies, because clearly, there are some problems with the Roku/Tablo combination on certain Roku products.
I know you weren’t “here” for the December Roku debacle. There was an update, it didn’t work. They pushed out a fix within hours, but ROKU wouldn’t offer it in their app store for almost 2 more weeks. Sounds like Roku’s not perfect (oh … yeah… that’s right, they had to push a whole OS update because of whatever Roku had messed up).
Your computer gets nearly daily updates, but you don’t throw it out the window because it’s not perfect.
Even the channel scan has been overhauled from back then – it’s in numerical order and I’m okay if I need to do one on a 
Roku stick 
if I have to.
Easy solution to those emails:
Check the “Tracking” popup menu below and switch it to MUTE.
You posted a topic people are going to have an opinion on – but at least they’re current opinions. Your posts go from the World Series not recording to “I gave up and returned the piece of crap” – in November. Between asking for a callback at 11pm in October and giving up sometime in November, there’s nothing sharing what you’d done or to what degree you and @TabloSupport were in contact.
Maybe I’m an idiot for having “emergency/extra” HDMI devices, but when one goes out, I can always switch to a different system. BTW, my Rokus (different models) are put away because they’re own camera app is broken and has been since January 2nd. I have to use another company’s product because their own app doesn’t work on their own product. BUT I keep the Rokus around for testing Tablo problems/updates and in case a heavily used app doesn’t work right on another device. (Like when the Search function in the Android/Fire app didn’t work for ONE DAY until they rushed out an update that fixed it.)
Again, I’m sorry your experience was so horrible. I can only imagine the time and energy you spent trying to make things work when it was so new and most of us had no idea what we were doing with them. It’s hard to offer help when everyone alongside you is learning as well, and if support didn’t give you the proper time and energy, that’s sad.
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Everyone uses their devices differently and I can only guess how many times I’ve had to go to my Mom’s to figure out why something on her Roku wasn’t working. I’d had enough and bought her a newer model that’s caused a lot less frustration.
As stated above, Roku’s own camera app on their own device doesn’t work properly. It’s possible they’ve taken care of this in the last few days, but I only plug them in on weekends to check for fixes and updates.
You can’t compare a firestick to the prime app. Like with any STB, you have to turn off ads and change the layout how you’d like (many Roku users do prefer just a list of apps, but after a couple more clicks you are able to see all installed apps in a grid.)
GoogleTV is no different, but you can have it in app-only mode (but you won’t be able to use your voice remote for commands or install new apps until you exit that mode).
The Tablo uses raw MPEG-2 for it’s video and it’s becoming more and more apparent that certain older devices are just too underpowered for this change in compression (from the older Tablo devices). Even so, I can make every aspect of the app work on a Roku Express+ (3910RW), but it takes a little finagling. The most annoying being the need to pause and increase the buffer for live TV (which should be higher since even the FAST stations have 20+ seconds built up).
Things have improved in the 0.8.401 version and my 4k Express+ handles it very smoothly. I just don’t care for the Roku interface so I use other products.
Other than being unable to watch your 4th gen on a computer, what sort of problems are you experiencing?
The “time and energy” support gave me was listed very clearly in my initial post:
Customer service is a disaster, long wait times and an automated system that lies to you about how long the wait time will be.
Asked for a supervisor, I’m told all they do is email you back but of course they never do.
Actually got a phone agent today who blatantly hung up on me, then ADMITTED she hung up on me when I got her on the line again.
Then she told me all the problems I’m having are a “known issue” and it will take “weeks” for them to even investigate, much less fix it if they ever do.
Didn’t argue with you. I’ve never called Tablo Support, but I’ve had multiple back and forth emails which garnered responses. It sounds like I had a little more patience and might have nagged them more than you did. I don’t rely on a company’s callback – if I did, I’d still be waiting for both the electric and cell phone co to call me back from December. Instead, I’ve had to use chats and other forums/support pages together to get things sorted.
I know we’re past the point of fixing your Tablo issue, but out of curiosity, what other platforms/sticks/devices did you use and were the results the same?
I wish Tablo wasn’t so dead set on us not factory resetting our Tablos. I understand that they’d like to look at the logs and see what went wrong, but the 5 minutes it takes to wipe the puck is so much faster than 2-3 days of waiting. (BTW, I’ve had to do that to all three of mine at very early points in their use.)
My Tablo 4th gen works fine. Using Firestick 4K…I just upgraded to the Firestick 4K MAX…works fine with that as well…
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Mine did too… The 4k. Then total fail. I posted my issues in another thread that ended up dying out (and funny enough, the lettering of the topic looks grey now)