@duanewilliams: the fast live startup was introduced in November or December. Is your Tablo must not be running the current firmware - 2.1.24?
Edit: forgot - I think the option is only available on the html app at the moment.
Jestep: okay, 10 seconds is also too long. It feels like forever. ;)
When my 2 tuners are already tuned to 2 different channels, the channel switching is very quick. iPad is the quickest, Roku is quick but not as fast. Roku wired is a lot faster than Roku wireless.
Are your front end devices connected via WiFi by chance?
Well, HLS players (the streaming protocol used by the Tablo) all wait until they have three segments available and have downloaded the first segment.
This reminds me of this movie quotation:
“Instant gratification takes too long.” – Postcards from the Edge
The BIGGEST problem with the Tablo is all the thumbnails used for the EPG. Please give us an option for thumbnails or force everyone to TEXT which loads faster. For some reason the Roku 3 syncs faster than my phone (both on WiFi). Perhaps it is because the Roku is always on, so does the Tablo sync in the background on the Roku or not until you go to the Tablo channel?
Tablo does sync on the fly, aka on demand. Rest of the apps sync everything upon opening the app. Hence the difference in experience.
I do hope they aren’t downloading the same images to me over and over again with every sync, which would be insane, although it sometimes feels like that.
Split your OTA antenna and connect a cable directly to your HDTV tuner for Live TV. Use the Tablo for DVR.
Exactly - live TV via the, uh, well, hmmm… TV! Tablo is the DVR, when we want to watch TV, we watch the TV via TV tuner. No problems, my wife can flip channels, chip flannel, surf the ether, whatever, and do it as fast as her little fingers can press buttons - or as fast as the cats can press the buttons.
I do agree I can skip the fun fancy “now, with-it, in, cool, hip” pictures. i don’t need to stare at a star’s smiling face or phony pose to know what show I want to watch. save the space, save the bandwidth, speed thing up - give me an all text option. Hyper-link the text like the old days. Many of us worked with Internet before there was enough computing power and Internet bandwidth to display more than a 20k picture, text is fine for us old-timers. I want it fast, don’t gotta be pretty.
I stopped channel surfing once I got my Tablo, I have the 4 tuner model and I can not keep up with my recordings. I periodically look up premiering shows and decided to record or not, I do not want to watch commercials and with the latest release I see no reason to watch live or recorded commercials. Try to not watch live you might really like it.
I stopped channel surfing once I got my Tablo, I have the 4 tuner model and I can not keep up with my recordings. I periodically look up premiering shows and decided to record or not, I do not want to watch commercials and with the latest release I see no reason to watch live or recorded commercials. Try to not watch live you might really like it.
I’m the same way… if I see a new Premiering show that looks interesting, I set it to Record New, and hold off watching until there are two or three recordings. The only thing I watch live now is the news.
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@GrandyWhen my 2 tuners are already tuned to 2 different channels, the channel switching is very quick. iPad is the quickest, Roku is quick but not as fast. Roku wired is a lot faster than Roku wireless.
Are your front end devices connected via WiFi by chance?
I may be in the minority, but I like to watch TV on the TV. Maybe Jeopardy on the tablet sometimes. I use my phone to set up recordings but don’t watch on it. I don’t have an ipad. I have a wired Roku & 2 wireless. Other than the complaints everybody has about Roku, it mostly works ok.
The scenario that does not work is watching 2 shows at once. I like to flip around between the late night talk shows - watch one until a commercial and then switch to another and back up to watch that one until a commercial. And so on. I have the 4-tuner so I should be able to juggle 2 shows easily.
This is awkward at best. Watching show and get to commercial. Hit the Back button to go back to Live TV. Change to other channel. Rewind by the hit or miss method. Watch until commercial. Repeat.
If I’m missing an easier way, please enlighten me.
Having a 2 year old in the house pretty much precludes me from watching anything live… but I can see where it would bother some folks… I’ve pretty much adapted to just watching everything “previously recorded” if I even want to hope to actually enjoy a program and be able to recall any of it coherently.
I stopped channel surfing once I got my Tablo, I have the 4 tuner model and I can not keep up with my recordings. I periodically look up premiering shows and decided to record or not, I do not want to watch commercials and with the latest release I see no reason to watch live or recorded commercials. Try to not watch live you might really like it.
I stopped channel surfing when I got DISH mid-90s. That was slow enough to get me in the habit of using the guide to pick a channel before switching. Would be nice if you could browse guide while still watching a channel in a smaller box.
@GrandyWhen my 2 tuners are already tuned to 2 different channels, the channel switching is very quick. iPad is the quickest, Roku is quick but not as fast. Roku wired is a lot faster than Roku wireless.
Are your front end devices connected via WiFi by chance?
I may be in the minority, but I like to watch TV on the TV. Maybe Jeopardy on the tablet sometimes. I use my phone to set up recordings but don’t watch on it. I don’t have an ipad. I have a wired Roku & 2 wireless. Other than the complaints everybody has about Roku, it mostly works ok.
The scenario that does not work is watching 2 shows at once. I like to flip around between the late night talk shows - watch one until a commercial and then switch to another and back up to watch that one until a commercial. And so on. I have the 4-tuner so I should be able to juggle 2 shows easily.
This is awkward at best. Watching show and get to commercial. Hit the Back button to go back to Live TV. Change to other channel. Rewind by the hit or miss method. Watch until commercial. Repeat.
If I’m missing an easier way, please enlighten me.
Hmmm. This will be a problem for me too during football season. Wonder if they can provide a fix before then!
I stopped channel surfing once I got my Tablo, I have the 4 tuner model and I can not keep up with my recordings. I periodically look up premiering shows and decided to record or not, I do not want to watch commercials and with the latest release I see no reason to watch live or recorded commercials. Try to not watch live you might really like it.
This; I only have the 2-tuner model but I still can’t watch everything that is recorded. The only live tv I watch is local news/weather; but, more & more I get that from the internet.
@UGAdog, have you tried switching between your shows using the Recordings instead of live TV? If you are using a Roku, they would probably be almost beside each other on the Recent Recordings (or whatever it is called) filter.
@duanewilliams the flipping of channels are annoying… how about watching the content inside the DVR ? I often come across reading online people got some complaints that there’re some buffering issues. Thanks.
More than adequate answers have been provided although at the risk of being blunt, if the ~10-15 second delay for changing channels outweighs the benefits of transcoding to h.264, then TabloTV is wrong device for your needs. Could they improve the user interface to make changing channels less painful such as with picture in guide or transparent EPG? Sure. Will it happen anytime soon? Don’t hold your breath.
By transcoding, the Tablo allows the user to play live tv and recordings on a multitude of devices. The big weakness is that everytime you tune to a new channel, it has to transcode it at as well, and that takes 10-15 seconds to get it started and give the user a buffer so playback will be smooth.