I’ve seen solicitations for testers for Apple TV and LG TV. Is there an actual group of testers who supply feedback which is actually implemented? I’m a tester for a major home electronics company and they have a well developed infrastructure for testing and feedback. In addition, they supply the “toys” and let us keep them.
Yes. There is a separate forum where we discuss the AppleTV issues. TabloTV interacts with us in these “conversations” and many fixes have come from things we’ve noticed.
This is kind of funny. You mean Tablo can’t have its tech and software people buy and own devices that use the Tablo and test it before every firmware and software release? Kind of pathetic too. I guess they are not in the US? That is the only explanation I can think of.
I’m sure Tablo employees use their own pre-release product, but a beta like this one has the advantage of a bigger pool of “normal” users and wider diversity of devices and networks.
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Exactly! Think of how many more people there can be beta testing versus paid employees basically being forced to work off hours!
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First they would not have to test off hours. Testing should be done during the time they are in the office if there is an office.
Secondly most of the problems we owners are having would be easily found by only a few people using the varied equipment the Tablo 4th gen is supposed to work nicely with. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to experience the issues some large number of owners of Tablo 4th gen are having.
I really don’t see the need for dozens or more of Tablo owners to beta test. This is a cop out. It’s called passing the buck. Or not spending a buck to QA a product before selling it.
I have worked in QA and this is really bad business practice and a sign that Tablo is not a very well run business.
I would be embarrassed to make a product and then ask the people that buy it to test it for me.
If you had 100 “normal” people beta testing you might get 10 of them that can actually explain all the steps that occurred to reproduce the problem. And often the problem those 10 are explaining is already a known problem. The other 90 have no idea how they beached themselves. Those other 90 can take up a lot time unless you just ignore the noise.
Are you upset because people volunteer their time, or because Tablo had the audacity to ask them to?
This is common industry practice, and it’s a great benefit to get many eyes on the product. I for one am grateful they open up their development process this way. It’s not without a burden to them as well, to manage a pool of beta testers and to separate the signal from the noise in bug reports.
Whether or not they release hardware and software too early in the development process, despite known bugs, is a separate question 
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What do you think the solution is for beta testing a product?
You do what the big boys do. If you are going to have “normal” people test your product they need to actually test various features and components based on their test environment. Anything else that is discovered during the planned testing is a gift. But in reality has typically already been found.
Having “normal” people do what is being called beta testing can often be attributed to creating a feel good group experience.
That is similar to the model that the company that I test for uses. Their group of testers (chosen for each project), covers the whole range from expert to newbie. Each tester contributes in their own way. Ideally, a product which is mass marketed should be usable by the average consumer. The experts are generally better at getting into the more esoteric aspects of the product. I have no idea how many testers participate in each beta, but they do span the globe. I’ve been doing this for about 10 years now and it is actually very enjoyable.
My issue is I don’t think they do any testing at all based upon the issues I have with my Tablo 4th gen which are very basic problems, easy to find and have been experienced by many others.
My issue is that I think they are actually passing the buck and putting the onus to test the product on people who bought it and using them as testers and not spending the money to do a basic quality job before product launch!
My issue is I don’t think Tablo has anyone resident in the US environment that can test the product in the US and needs US customers to test it.
Ohiobob maybe but they can’t be in the USA. If they were they would have found some of the very basic issues I am seeing.
Lots of tech development and support is “offshore” to save people costs and thus results in the issues we are seeing with Tablo 4th gen.
One would think that after 10 years of producing a DVR product tablo would have a long list of testable items. And that various testable items would be handed out to beta testers to test. And I find it hard to believe that the “normal” people are comparing the appleTV meta data for shows/movies/sports, etc to a control device such as a Roku, FireTV, phone or tablet on a regular basis or check point.
I can agree on half of your statements.
Could they vet their beta testers better? Yes sure!
Actually worked for a very big tech vendor… beta is usually not very hard to get into.
ALPHA testing if what you are talking about. That group is a hand selected group.
As of now, Tablo is acting like everyone else.
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Again, you would be surprised how many tech vendors do this.
ALL OF THEM! Latvia is a hotbed for devs.
You’re making this a bigger deal than it is. Cuz everyone is doing this.
This is about devs… India and the Philippines are the hot bed for tech support.
My spouse and I each spent over 42 years in software R&D. The IBM’s, CDC’s, Sun’s, oracles, etc. So we might have been involved with the overseeing of Beta testing our products. Both by other hardware vendors and 3rd party apps - both those on the critical product list and non-critical list. We also had many friends that worked at other consumer products like microsoft. So we might have more insight into how things really work then you might believe.
Ok and congrats… and I can say is… same!
I’m saying what you are is a half truth to what is currently going on… you are describing alpha testing.
Out of curiosity: with all of your tech know-how, why have you not asked to be involved with any of Tablo’s developments over the last 10 years? Especially for a product you’ve been using for a very long time.
When was the last time you designed and implemented an operating system or operating system component.
At some companies entities external to the corporation are customer verification test - beta testers. Internal usage of the product is alpha test.