Yeah. Been there. Back on my missile defense project, I was in a secured lab with no windows. We had a critical release that had to go out and I worked three 80 hour weeks straight. We made coffee with caffeinated water, and then added caffeinated coffee syrup, towards the end there.
@jkline - Actually, Iāve been fairly happy with it. But Iām a power user, and Iām more than willing to hack some of my own solutions. I sincerely doubt that Apple is going to make a DVR. Itās not in their nature, and adding OTA support would hurt the relationships with the content providers theyāre trying so hard to win over right now for their streaming service. Of course, one can make the argument that once you have actual and true on-demand content the way we want on-demand content, a DVR will no longer be necessary.
By the wayā¦ my current job is with a company that provides the download features for major cable companyās mobile appsā¦ so I do understand where youāre coming from with the H.264 transcode issue. Such is life. I have to believe thereās a reason that decision was made, under the hood. Having the root mpeg 2 would be useful for a lot of reasons, but nobody at all is really doing that right now.
My point was that the locals would be available over the internetsānot that Apple would actually make a DVR. See speculation about the $40 package Apple is trying to put together.
You would never actually set a show to record. You would just have the ability to stream it when it is made available simultaneously with its broadcast. HBO Now works this way and it is a great experience.
LOL. My personal view of the HBO Now app is that they need to fire their UI/UX folks. They did the job half-way. It works pretty well, but itās missing some key data in the UI and key features in the UX that would have made it really awesome.
From the rumors Iāve read about Appleās $40 package, they donāt have all the major broadcast companies on board, and a few of the major locals were missing. Maybe theyāve covered more ground since the last guess I looked at.
Even soā¦ Iām more cheap than that. OTA is free. Iām more than willing to shell out $300 up-front to not have to pay any monthly service fees for my TV.
1 Like
The UI leaves a lot to be desired. I was referring to never having to hit record. All shows are available at broadcast time and thereafter.
1 Like
I listen even less to folks who use your sort of open tactics ā¦ but to each their own.
1 Like
I share all of Jimās frustrations and observations, and have voiced many, just not as bluntly. At the end of the day, all Table brings to the party is the box. I had a PC server with a pair of two-tuner cards and the SAGETV environment and it did absolutely everything requested here and more. But Google swallowed them up and buried them somewhere, but I kept with it until my extenders died (NICs went bad). But it is frustrating to have had programmable pre and post padding; selectable number of episodes to save; zero start up time for sync; restart from last position spot on, immediately; then to hear how hard it is with the usual āStand by, itās on the road map.ā I would absolutely switch in a heartbeat for a competing product or even back to the PC with tuner cards if there were a companion extender, but one that actually has the user experience, treating me like a customer, not as a partner in development. The future I see here is only two paths; 1) they just go under and all the zealots that testify to how great the Tablo team is put up a forum to limp along until, like SAGE, all the hardware is broken or 2) they finally get enough financial resources to put together a team that can really do this (so much of what Jim17 quotes as the way to do stuff is absolutely right and easily done, which is why it is so frustrating to those that have done this before) and what they come back with will do all of these things but, sorry, it takes a new box to implement them so āfor your loyalty take $100 off.ā
Iām frankly shocked that someone like Jim17 hasnāt simply coded up a complete replacement environment, including using standard file systems and support for both USBs, etc, and offered a replacement software suite. I would absolutely pay a hundred bucks or so to swap out this software and keep the box. Difficult to limit how many episodes to record? Oh please. I have no doubt the chap that wrote the software to just download the videos could write a utility that would simply look at the list, compare to a configuration file, and delete the extras daily.
Anyway, Jim17, my thanks for the direct observations that this stuff just really isnāt that difficult and the recent update is just way too little to impress.
Received update yesterday and installed. Lag time in loading has been reduced to 10 to 12 seconds from as much as 19 seconds. No loss in recordings. Glad to see some improvement in software, so hopefully further improvements to provide instantaneous or near instantaneous response will be made.
I think Jimās suggestions should be given careful consideration, or the product will not survive long-term.A lot of opportunities for enhancements, so hopefully will be provided for in upcoming plans.
Please use capitals when you rant.
1 Like
Simply putāI donāt care.
My Tablo allows me to stream ālive TVā and it allows me to record and playback shows from anywhere on my network. Iām happy as that is what I want it to do for me. Everything else is just bitching about the color scheme. The UI isnāt perfectādeal with it. The software architecture relies too much on the app to do the lifting (as opposed to letting the server handle it), so what. I canāt play the latest 17 channel surround sound (or whatever the flavor of the day is)āI donāt give a damn. My Tablo streams live TV and acts as a DVR.
Just my $.02.
6 Likes
I would be perfectly happy if only the Roku app didnāt reboot almost every time I use it.
2 Likes
Exactly Richard! Iāve been trying to figure out this Roku rebooting issue for a while now. saw over 500 replies on another thread. Tablo is great for me so far but there are a few features and bugs that I hope they are able to fix soon.