Your comment presumes that changes must be made in some cases to accomodate future needs, and finishes with a “who could have ever expected this unintended outcome” type of excuse.
My stated position utterly rejects both of these premises, since:
1–adding future growth / expansion or support for new features should only begin AFTER existing problems have been solved, and the lengthy list of known bugs has been resolved. The current approach just adds more confusion to an already confused picture.
And
2–The people who developed this system and present it as a stable entertainment system SHOULD KNOW AND ANTICIPATE outcomes of their design and programming work and cannot claim that things did not work out as expected. The use of testing, verification and validation of new code is a science which can be properly practiced and managed. I realize we are not talking about mission-critical software in a pacemaker, air traffic control console, or X-ray machine, but the techniques of engineering reliable software are well understood but yet not being obeyed here. Weak methods and weak testing are going to lead to unexpected outcomes and “who could know?” excuses.
Maybe having 5 solid playback platforms would better serve the customer base rather than 6 less stable players…Amazon, Chromecast, Android, iOS, computer web browser, Roku…pick any 5…
Your reply was better then my nonsensical one. But both still show that ever changing variables will always exist and have to be sorted out. In the case of Tablo, it is a device initially sold with the understanding of on-going changes. The Tablo folks are a small group of “inventors” and “innovators” that are attempting to fit into an already established, but ever changing media environment hoping they can change with it.
I have been an avid hobbyist in many technical venues. I have also been in business in a few of them. I each and everyone I have seen first hand changes come so swiftly that those not anticipating and preparing for them get left in the dust. I have also seen changes come on so broad a scale there was no reasonable way to address them well enough to keep afloat. I am partners in a business that succumbed to just that.
I think Tablo might have this happen to them, if they cannot get better at their updates. They have a large enough user base now that it can influence others well enough to either a positive or negative outcome. Not everyone wants to be a “beta tester”, most just want to have and enjoy their Tablo for what they presumed they were buying it for.
Personally, I enjoy having it once I got over not having what I was expecting to have, not entirely anyway. I have made and will continue to make good use of it in my little world of home theater entertainment. If I find something better (for me better is Dolby surround sound 5.1 or better 7.2), I will no doubt switch, but until then I will keep pluggin’ away.
Thanks Rodger. The ongoing changes which need to be accomodated really are not the driver here. The same streams which played smoothly on 2.2.2. stopped playing smoothly on 2.2.6. And previously stable connections for remote access worsened with 2.2.6. And new long pauses between fast forward, play, and navigation showed up suddenly as well, creating new lengthy threads from users suddenly needing to experiment with workarounds. The only ‘ongoing changes’ are unsuccesful bug fixes and addrd new bugs. I am all for innovation, new products, more features, and especially entrapenurial ventures, and engineers with MBAs and management skills thrive on all of this. But a flawed product with unhappy users should sound the fire alarm to those running the business.
At the end of the day, satisfied customers make a business grow. If a customer has a working system and suddenly begins to experience crashes, long waiting times, no connections with no apparent remedies, they are highly unlikely to remain satisfied customers. A short-sighted answer offered by a loser is: Go elsewhere and find something better. A winner instead says: Let’s find and fix these problems, pronto! We want more customers, not less.
I have a real case of cognitive dissonance here…little or no apparent resolution of many problems, arguably worsening with time, yet the bones of a beautiful DVR which worked well for (the first) 5 of the 12 months I have owned it. Some very nice people struggling to add new features and become a jack of all trades supporting all current set-top players at a time when bug fixes on the most popular player by far, the Roku, go unrepaired.
Hoping things start improving and looking forward to Roku firmware V7 as well.
Agreed - looking forward to Tablo making some real headway towards fixing the Tablo firmware & Roku interactions. And while your comment is perhaps negative overall, you do mention something positive and very important I think, which is that there are the “bones of a beautiful DVR” in Tablo. I want to believe that Tablo will get the Roku issues sorted - just wish it would happen faster than it has (as I imagine we all do).
If you never used Tablo with Roku, but were instead using Fire TV or Android TV you’d have a completely different experience at this point. Fire TV hasn’t ever re-booted, doesn’t complain “Loading Please Wait”, loads the Guide and Recordings pages quickly and reliably, and starts playback nearly instantly from FFW.
I thought perhaps Roku 3 just wasn’t up to the task, but the Roku 4 is certainly hardware capable of a smooth app experience but doesn’t work much better with the current Tablo apps than the Roku 3. That said, other than maybe fixing the re-booting issue (which admittedly is a big issue), Roku 4 on version 7 firmware doesn’t perform any better currently than Roku 3 on version 6.2 firmware in my experience.
I would love to see Roku V7 solve the FFReboot issue and would apologize profusely to Tablo and to those who are tired of reading my complaints since April. The Tablo is a very attractive DVR, even beautiful, but the engineering brain of mine can take exception to superficial glitz and beauty when function is given a back seat and form is more important. The engineering deraugatory phrase sometimes called “lipstick on a pig” is the extreme example of a great looking product which does not have the underlying functions done well. In the case of Tablo I personally believe fully that it not only has very good “bones” but in fact I used Tablo for 5 trouble-free months with no complaints, totally impressed! In fact, I went out and bought a total of 5 more Rokus specifically because Tablo worked so well with the 2 Rokus I already owned. I never expected such a good stable product could go so very bad overnight…
Sitting with nearly $1200 invested, crashing and rebooting, retired with a skeptical wife who, like me, enjoyed TV while doing cooking, exercising, laundry, watching prime time, sports, etc., the pressure to see this matter resolved makes the 7 month delay to resolve this seem longer. As we proceed into winter, the value of having a working stable DVR only increases. Thus, fingers crossed…
Once again the complete idiots at Tablo have demonstrated their complete incompetence with this latest so called upgrade.
Not just from releasing the update on a Friday with no tech support on the weekends ( why do you think microsoft releases on tuesday). No you people had to introduce more bugs(disconnecting hard drive is back again) and strip features (removing preview window really).
And then there’s the fact that your tech dept doesn’t even bother to read the tickets sent.
Thanks again for taking a possible awesome product and turning it into an overpriced piece of garbage.
They rolled out the upgrade if you remember. It showed up on mine on friday. I was going to wait till monday to do it, but mom did it. Which was fortunate when it gave me an out for having to wipe all her shows when i had to do a factory reset.
the new firm ware corrupted the database and wouldn’t let it connect.
And now the hard drive keeps disconnecting, slow playback on roku and all the other crap
1 YOUR NOT MY BRO
2 go troll someone else with your lame advice
3 I actually had to do the factory reset thing 3 times today to get it to see the hard drive again
4 tablo as others have said is a great concept with lousy follow thru
5 OR IN-OTHER WORDS TABLO IS A PIECE OF CRAP