I just updated my legacy tablo firmware, and grabbed the new apps from the various app stores… But I’m seeing different “views” of the library on different devices and trying to figure out how to standardize them.
On my Samsung TVs the library ONLY displays shows that have a recorded episode in the library. This is how the old apps all worked, and frankly, is the correct user experience.
On my Roku TVs the library displays every show that I’ve ever scheduled a recording task for, along with the number of episodes available. Meaning 75% of the title cards say “0 new episodes available” (cancelled, off-season, etc.).
I can’t find an obvious checkbox or filter in the Roku app settings to say “only display shows with a recorded episode”, but there has to be one somewhere… This can’t be the horrid user experience they intentionally designed right?
I have been encouraging Tablo to correct this for nearly a year. For a short while it was the reverse, you couldn’t see show programmed with no recordings and nothing upcoming. That was also a pain because you couldn’t change the programming for those shows.
You CAN see a screen showing only programs with recordings ready to watch on the Android phone app (not sure about iPhone). I often open the app on my phone to quickly decide what to watch before opening Tablo on my Roku. It is a nuisance, but it works.
Many of us have posted requesting that Tablo provide a way to view a list of recorded shows (and only the recordings). I really think that the interface desperately needs this, however, Tablo doesn’t think that this a big problem.
Tablo has posted that since you can view all recordings using the ‘all recordings’ library view, a view to show only the recordings is unnecessary. For me, having to muck around in the ‘all recordings’ view to find my actual recordings is very annoying. Also, the ‘Recent’ view does not show older recordings, so that does not help.
All other DVRs that I have ever seen are able to display a list of recordings. I think displaying a list of recorded shows is something that a DVR is expected to do.
Imagine going to your town’s library.
Upon entering the library you see rows of bookcase shelves full of books. You’re amazed at all the titles available to you. Then every time you pull the book it’s empty.
I updated my legacy Tablo to be able to try the new Gen 4 app on my Fire TV 4K MAX, and have for the Library view much harder to navigate than the original Legacy App. Shows are showing up that no longer air and for which no recordings exist, and I can’t easily see shows organized by folder view… newly recorded shows over the past few weeks are all over the place. I upgraded to be able to see what Tablo has done with FAST channels in the Live TV view, and that works as expected for the most part, but now I have to keep the Legacy App on my FireTV to be able to easily find shows that I’ve recorded. I’m surprised that the newer 4G app is so much worse than the Legacy app.
Unfortunately, there’s no parity between the Legacy and Gen4 apps, nor is there parity between the different Gen4 apps like Roku, FireTV, and Android. There have been many comments about this where showing zero Scheduled recordings in the All Recordings just doesn’t make sense.
It’s surprising to me that in many respects, the Gen 4 app is a giant step backwards from what we had in the Legacy app. How hard is it to gather all episodes of a series and have them all in one place, inside a folder. Gen 4 makes it much harder to find recorded episodes from a series, as I have to scroll all the way through other recordings to make sure I don’t miss a show recorded before the one I was about to watch.
I only have one channel that has decent local news. So unlike legacy which has genre/news, I go to the news folder and then to my channel under all networks. Lo and behold I discover that the Big Bang Theory, Family Feud, Penn and Teller, etc are all now news shows.