New 3rd Party Android App: ota2GO

Hello, fellow Tablophiles :slight_smile: I’ve been a happy Tablo owner from the very beginning, and have always wanted a simple phone app that would let me download videos to watch on the go. So now I’ve made one… ota2GO.

I’m wondering if there are a few people interested in getting early access in exchange for letting me know of any crashes or issues that you might find!

Full disclosure: my current intention is to offer this app in the Play store for $2-3. It takes a lot of hours to make one of these, and it would be great to earn a pint for my efforts :beer:

If you have an Android device, version 6.0 or later, and would like to take it for a spin and give me feedback, please just drop me a private message here. I’ll just need an email to add you to the Google testers group.

Thanks!

  • Steve
3 Likes

I would like to give it a try if only I used Android but I’m on Apple. Any plans on making this available on Apple products? If so I would definitely be a beta tester.

HI, John – thanks! But, sorry, no plans for an Apple version – I don’t have any knowledge or skills re how to make an iPhone/iPad app - and actually I don’t have an iPhone either :slight_smile: lol! There are other great Tablo rippers that other authors offer here, so maybe one of those is more Apple friendly.

Cheers!

Overall the app has worked great. I’ve only tried the TimeSaver download and it was pretty quick. The shows I’ve downloaded have been 1 hour and about 1.5 - 2 GB and took about 10 minutes to download. Playback of the downloads have been smooth.

One issue I have found is after watching a recording directly or a download for at least 15 minutes and then going back to the download section, the list is doubled. So A -Z is listed then after Z, A - Z starts again. Hope that makes sense. At first I thought it was a cool feature and the list looped. But when I got down to the end the second time it stopped.

Awesome - thanks for the feedback! And RRrrghhhh I saw that same A-Z, A-Z thing early on in development, but haven’t been able to reproduce it. Obviously still there… maybe I can just claim it’s a cool feature :wink: I’ll put a little extra focus on trying to reproduce and eliminate. I recall that it was harmless - just stuff listed twice - but it’s a bit disorienting.

Appreciate the help testing and feedback as well… a few other kind folks have chipped in and helped me isolate an android 8.1 compatibility problem, which should be resolved by morning.

Thanks again!

  • Steve

Yes it appears to be harmless. Didn’t matter which “group” recording I selected.

I was able to reproduce twice by playing two different shows for at least 15 minutes. Exiting the app did not clear it. I had to force close. After that it’s back to normal.

When I get my Tablo I would like to try too.

Will this work on Android TVs or on a chrome book that can run PlayStore apps?

Hi @rbryan - I honestly don’t know. I wrote it to operate on phones and tablets with the “take recordings on the go” idea, and didn’t specifically target Android TV or chrome book - probably the existing Tablo apps are great for those. It is possible to retrieve the downloaded recordings from ota2GO to play on other devices (just copy the files via USB) but there are also other great rippers offered here that might better fit. Thx!

This is a great app to have! Two issues I found when testing on the Galaxy S9+ (running Android 8.0) and Galaxy Tab S3 (running Android 7):
1). On the Galaxy Tab S3, download starts within a minute once I clicked the download button. However, when I did the same on the Galaxy S9+, the download button turns pink immediately with the 3 dots, but nothing happens (and download won’t start) until I use the Back button to exit back to the Recordings main screen then come back to that episode inside the recording screen.

2). On recordings that were split by Tablo into multiple files, only the first file gets displayed and available for download. It will be great if we still have the option to download all files that belong to the same program. I’m not sure how often the split recording happens on other users, but I’ve been getting that pretty frequently lately (not sure if it has to do with the beta firmware that I’ve signed up for.)

I’m looking forward to your next update and re-test :slight_smile:

Thanks, @kamy2015!

Interesting re point number 1 - it’s probably just “analyzing” the download - it stays in the “…” state for a few minutes and the service notification in the phone’s top drag-down thing says “analyzing” until it has comprehended the video and started to download. Did downloads complete successfully on both devices?

On number 2, could you be a bit more specific? In my case, I have a recording that’s split in two parts with a little bit of time missing between them (the Tablo lost good antenna signal for a bit). In ota2GO these two parts both show as downloadable. In your case, are you saying that your Tablo software shows multiple parts but ota2GO shows only one?

Thanks so much for your help!

  • Steve

I did more testing and found that issue# 1 was actually due to the pink button not getting refreshed on its own. I noticed that if I click the download button and don’t touch anything for 5 minutes, the “…” will stay intact; but at that time if I look at the phone pull down, I can actually see the download progress; and once I exit the pull down screen, the download percentage starts showing up on the pink button. It seems that the “…” was stuck and it won’t refresh until some screen updates. (Note that this does not happen on the Galaxy Tab S3 where the percentage starts showing up on its own.)

As for the recordings that are split into multiple files, I can only see the first part. Not sure if the fact that I’m on the beta Tablo f/w 2.2.19 has anything to do with that.

Awesome testing, thank-you! The app uses local internal messaging to update the percentages, so I"ll have to investigate why that might not be working on Android 8. Really appreciate the detailed investigation! I’ll keep digging in to that multi-part piece as well!

Testing today went well. Downloaded a couple of shows using the SpaceSaver option. The download for a 30 minute show with the Great/720p option took about 45 minutes to download.

For the one hour shows, with the same settings, one took only about 45 minutes. It was a show I had downloaded yesterday with the TimeSaver setting but deleted the copy this morning. The other show took an hour or a little over (1 hour & 15-20 minutes).

I have Android 8.0 and not experiencing the same issues that @kamy2015 is reporting on their issue #1 but when I first started checking the app out I thought the download wasn’t working. After touching the download it would change to pink with the 3 dots as described. The Requesting notification would pop up for a few seconds. Then it appeared nothing was happening. I did the back out then go back in to check a few times then it would start. I didn’t realize it was Analyzing beforehand and after that completed then the download began. Plus it wasn’t until this afternoon I saw in the notification bar it actually shows the process (and I see it is also mentioned above).

The double list is not limited to after viewing a show within the app after a certain amount of time as I thought. It is also not limited to the main Recording list. Today I have only downloaded but not viewed any shows and the list was double. Also when going into the show list for DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which is the show I’ve been downloading, it is showing double. I’ve looked at other show list and those are not doubled.

I did more testing and it now appears that issue# 1 was actually timing related on the icon refresh. What happens is that after I clicked the download button and let my phone screen time-out/auto lock, I waited a few minutes and then unlock my phone to check download status. At that time, the download button will still show “…”; but if I wait long enough, the percentage will eventually pop up (and it will start with the completion percentage at that instant (e.g. 5 %) which is also proof that the download was already in progress in the background while the button was still showing “…”). Hope this clarifies my earlier findings.

Thanks so much for the detailed testing, both to you guys and the folks using private channel! I should have an update ready in a couple of days that will:

  • guard against that list doubling thing
  • be more tolerant of network blips while downloading
  • update the download progress a bit more quickly so it’s obvious that things are happening

Thanks also for the timing on the “Space Saver” option – transcoding is a heavy operation for a phone and I don’t want to suck out all of the phone’s performance, so it’s a balance. Definitely Time Saver is the way to go if one has sufficient storage (which I never do! lol!)

Thx again!

Just a quick FYI - I’ve changed the name of the app to ota2GO. It will be reflected on the next update.

I didn’t want to create any confusion with the apps that our friends at Tablo make. The trademark is rightfully theirs, of course!

Cheers!

3 Likes

Something I noticed today is general behavior for clicking on an app notification (especially during analyzing and downloading processes) would be to open the app from the notification. Would be nice if it at least opened the app itself from the notification, right now it doesn’t do anything.

Upgraded to the latest version earlier tonight and can confirm the app name changed correctly and I’ve yet to encounter the double listings so far.

Update to newest version was successful. The moving dots for the analyse process is a nice change. :+1: Takes away the wondering if anything is happening after the download button is pressed.

I was curious how the app handled multiple download requests at once. So I selected two episodes to download. It’s a queue system and ran smooth.

The double list bug is still alive. So far it hasn’t shown up in the main recording list. It is however showing up in the individual show list. I noticed that it is only happening on shows I have downloaded episodes.

Ah ha. That explains why I didn’t see it. I deleted all downloaded shows before installing the app update.