My wife and I “cut the cable” last June when we installed a Tablo 4 tuner and 3 Roku. We are mostly happy. Except for the Tablo Roku app. We watch Tablo live tv thru Roku. We do this so that we can pause, rewind and fast forward while we watch tv. Here’s the dilema (and I know everyone is aware of it, but again I am just venting) if I want to change channels, it takes 5 minutes. If we want to go from watching live tv to watching a recording, or vice versa, it takes over 8 minutes. And before anyone tells me my perception of time is off, I timed it. Yet, on the Tablo 2 tuner model it is much quicker. I hope I can wait another month or 2 for the new Roku app. Our friends and neighbors are anxiously waiting to see the new app. They won’t “cut the cable” based on seeing how slow Tablo 4 tuner thru Roku is. If I watch Tablo live tv or recordings via my iPad, it is fast. But I didn’t buy 3 large LED flat screens to watch tv on my iPad. Please Hurry with the new app. My mental health is in your hands.
8-|
It should not take that long, something else must be wrong. Mind you it is longer than I would like, closer to 8-12 seconds for live TV.
Which steps are taking so long? Can you go through the steps that you are doing and give a time estimate for each one?
Wow, I’d be venting too if it took 8 minutes to go from live to watching a recording. I have the 4 tuner and Roku 3 and I just timed, with a stopwatch, both the scenarios you list and here are my times (I rounded up to nearest second on each):
Is your Roku hard wired to your network or are you using it in wireless mode?
I could see wireless mode being much slower especially depending on your Wi-Fi setup in your home.
My Roku is hard wired to the router and it only takes seconds like what others have said to switch between live TV channels and to switch from live TV to recordings.
This is not normal behaviour. I would not expec the Roku update to fix your problems. Let’s try to solve your problems now.
Everyone has asked relevant questions. And we can all help from there.
@Mojo This is definitely not the intended performance - while loading times on the Roku can be a little slower since they don’t sync, I’ve never seen them go over a minute or so here.
Wait a second here. Have we officially confirmed there is a performance difference between the 2-tuner and 4-tuner ?
Wait a second here. Have we officially confirmed there is a performance difference between the 2-tuner and 4-tuner ?If the 4-tuner is running on lesser hardware, or even the same hardware given the extra overhead of 4-tuners that could be a big difference for people choosing between 2-tuners with speed and 4-tuners with lag ???
What in this thread would lead to that conclusion? What ever is going on with the OPs 4 tuner is certainly not a design issue. I posted my 4 tuner results above - I’d be very surprised if the 2 tuner is any faster at any of the steps measured.
No, there should not be any performance difference between the two devices. I have actually heard more people say the 4 tuner is a little faster than the 2 tuner.
Thanks all. Our Tablo and 1 Roku 2XS are hard wired. 1 Roku 2 and Roku stick are wireless. There is no apparent difference in performance, they are all slow. Tablo tech has been in our setup in the past and found problems like having 88 over the air channels and Tablo would lock up and we would have to reset it often. We have a Tablo recommended 2TB SeagateHD. I sent our info to tech support and hopefully they will look into it.
Get a Roku3, the other ones are horrible compared to the “3”. Have you tried only selecting 8-10 channels when you set it up and see if that affects you channel change time? just throwing it out there as something to try and locate the issue. Good luck
@crm1975 That’s a great suggestion, not unlike what we’ve been working on with a clone of @Mojo’s Tablo. We’re getting close on this - thanks for your patience!
Hi, just to add to this discussion. For the past week or so I’ve been experiencing the same very-slow Roku 3 interactions. Tablet and desktop apps are both very fast, but Recordings is nearly unusable with Roku 3. It takes 60+ seconds just to bring up Recordings, another 30 seconds to select Episodes for a particular recording, another 10-15 seconds to select an episode and finally another 5-10 seconds for it to start playing. So, around 2 1/2 to 3+ minutes to watch an episode. This was running much faster a couple of weeks ago when I first got the Tablo, otherwise I would’ve sent it back already. Live TV is pretty slow too, but 30 sec range to get list and channel. Not great, but tolerable. This is not a network issue, since Tablo and Roku are hard-wired and tablet and desktop (both wi-fi) are very fast. I’ve also sent this info to Tablo Support, but wanted to share my experience with Roku 3 regarding latest update to see if anyone else is seeing this. I’m using Tablo 4-tuner, Ethernet connected, Roku 3, Ethernet connected. Thanks.
Could be an issue with a massive database as the Roku is the only device that does not sync with the Tablo.
- How many OTA channels do you have on your Tablo?
- How many recordings do you have? Not the number of shows, but the number of epsiodes.
- What is the make, model and size of your HDD? How much space is free on it?
All relevant questions for seeing why things take longer to load.
Thanks so much. I have 32 OTA channels and probably 30 recordings total, the most are 7 episodes. You’re right, probably an issue with Roku and lack of caching. But, as we’re using a Roku as a set top box, this is certainly a major determent in keeping the Tablo. I just retried my scenario again and at it was at 5+ minutes to get to the point of selecting a particular episode…then the Tablo crashed. Uugh, very frustrating user experience. I’ve been in IT 30+ years and this product has the feel of a pre-alpha product. Certainly fine if I bought it at kickstarter pricing, but my investment is over $350+ for the Tablo (with a new hard disk). IMHO that is a bit high for the crashes, slowness, messed up recordings, etc. I’ve experienced in the first couple of weeks. Also, throw in missing ‘basic’ DVR features like the ability to delete multiple episodes, limit number of episodes , etc. and it makes me wonder about alternatives.
@sesipe can you give us the exact firmware version you have on your Roku. Mine is 6.1 build 5604. This is a beta that fixes issues in the initial 6.1 release. The final release looks to be 6.1 build 5610.
I’m on Roku 6.1 Build 5517. It is a brand new Roku and doing auto-updates. So I haven’t loaded any beta firmware from Roku. Wasn’t even aware you could 
@sesipe you can’t load them, they target you directly for beta testing. I was lucky and added to the list because of a Roku Forum thread on video stuttering issues, among others. Pretty sure 5517 is the “bad” 6.1 firmware.