I upgraded to 2.2.8 earlier this week.
For some reason I now have no access to any of my recorded shows through my Roku boxes (I have 2 Roku 2’s and a Roku Stick).
I have tried rebooting the network and tried a hard reset on the Tablo. I have also tried deleting the channel from Roku and re-adding it to no avail.
When I access Tablo through a Chrome browser or my phone app I can see the recordings are there still and that my shows are still set to record.
Any suggestions?
When problems are assumed to be network related are we referring to the router in particular, the internet speed delivered by provider, or both?
My network is running at a meager 3.5 megabytes yet my FF function is flawless since switching from Chromecast to Nexus player.
The router and your home network. Your internet speed has no effect on the Tablo except when using Tablo Connect for remote access.
I read Christmas lights can cause WiFi interference
Whoa now…what makes Tablo, needing to be at 720-3 or 720-5 on Roku, more high performance than Netflix or HULU streaming in HD? Especially when those others run perfectly…and on a Roku? I know you chose to use a different format to stream than the mainstream streamers, which leads to the big WHY? question, but it’s not like you were caught off guard by what Roku was capable of. You packaged Tablo to look, act, and feel like any other Roku channel. And I wouldn’t rate watching broadcast TV or recordings of broadcast TV a high performance prospect. Pretty basic these days. Making it work takes skill but not high performance.
Apple vs. Orange. For one thing a “streamer” is not a “live streamer”. When your not a live streamer you can hold on to multiple transoded variations and dynamically adapt to changes in stream quality.
With that said, everyone didn’t like the standard brightscript style channel interface… so everyone started getting fancy and it’s harder to do and IMHO, a bit intensive. Surely you’ve seen Netflix crash or had your Roku crash shorty after using Netflix. It’s resource intesive and I don’t think Roku can clean up or maybe it just pushes the device too hard resource wise.
Could the Tablo Roku channel be better? Sure.
With regards to “different format”… actually Tablo gets called out for not using native OTA, but the reason is that mpeg2_ts is not the greatest streaming format, so by recording in mpeg4_ts, youi have something that’s more accepted as a streaming protocol. Do the others do differently? Not sure… I think the adaptive playback is at least Netflix’s edge… different, but maybe not so much in the packaging and delivery apart from that.
With that said, I do believe this is more here that we don’t know about… (hopefully good things to come and not bad stuff).
Mpeg2 takes a lot more bandwidth. That’s why companies like DirecTV went from Mpeg2 to MP4 for their own broadcasting. When that happened all of us DirecTV users had to convert to new receivers,
One thing I dislike about MP4 is the scene transition. It is a lot smoother with Mpeg2. Given MP4’s compression of video data, a transition from one scene to another is a lot more blocky and less smooth than with Mpeg2. In MP4 the scene transition is basically a thousand minute blocks of pixels between two different scenes. With Mpeg2 the scene transition is more of a natural fade out and fade in.
But then I’m the type that prefers the sound coming from the old LP record to MP3 …minus the scratches…
Sometimes analogue is better than digital - sometimes.
I just changed my streaming device from the firetv stick to the nvidia shield android tv. The improvement is apparent as night and day. The menus system works so much faster on the shield. It now works as it should.
The live TV guide used to take 30 or more seconds to load on the fire tv, and lagged. With the shield the live tv loads in 6 seconds and scrolling is fast.
It still takes 17 seconds for the live channel to start playing though.
So I highly recommend switching to the shield. I wish had done that earlier.
Also for those into kodi this is easy to download and install on the shield. No rooting or special skills required unlike fire tv.
I am too unfamiliar to disagree with any of the technical points. But thanks for giving it a shot. On the live streamer part I watched a live show via Roku using an AMEX channel not too long ago. I have no idea what technology was involved but it was live and it was streaming. My local cable company also just released an app to watch their content, some of which is from live local channels. Streaming to me is anything using “bandwidth” and pardon my ignorance if that’s not the correct term. Whether you stream in mpeg2 or mpeg4 you’re streaming right?
But my point earlier was regarding the TabloTV employee’s belief that the Tablo is high performance and inferring the Roku isn’t capable. Like Tablo to Roku is putting jet fuel in a Corolla. The term hogwash comes to mind. The Tablo is cool but not sure we can call it high performance. For one that would mean it performs at a high level and with the size and scope of this forum I’d be inclined to disagree. I remember a post of mine regarding time to step up to the plate earlier this year and not much has changed. Some feature improvements and fixes but then stability waned and we’re not just talking via Roku either. I love the Tablo concept and actually mine is working fairly well now through the Roku 3 (v7.0 on 2.2.8 beta5) although it’s way too early to call it consistently well. I’m sure there are more releases planned and I’d like to not see the “one step forward, two steps back” thing happen AGAIN. But enjoying the ride in the perfectly fine stock Corolla running on regular gasoline…just don’t provide me with stale fuel or some new kind of fuel not rated for my known vehicle. I got the survey email so will respond as they requested. Again, thanks for the knowledgeable and helpful insight cjcox.
One thing I still find odd is that prior to 2.2.2 I could stream to my Roku 3 using the 1080p setting (now the 8Mbps setting) with zero LPW or any other buffering issues. An occasional Roku reboot during FF was the only issue. After that firmware I can’t even get the lower resolutions to work without LPW. Something changed in that firmware. There were no other changes in my systems at that time. Since then, there have been Roku updates, and Tablo updates, but nothing has completely fixed the playback issues to the Roku.
If it worked fine before 2.2.2, this issue cannot completely be a problem with the Roku’s capacity.
I’ve switched to the Nexus, so I’m no longer waiting for Roku playback to be fixed.
This has been my contention all along. Something in Tablo firmware changed, suddenly taking me overnight from 6 smoothly operating Rokus to a nearly unusable crashing train wreck.
To further reinforce my earlier conclusions stated in the 9 month old thread which started when all of us began experiencing FFRebooting problems in April, the Tablo is where the problem lies.
My new, additional second Tablo arrived yesterday with very old firmware factory installed. Rather than updating it, I used it briefly as is.
There were no LPWs whatsoever and virtually no reboots of any kind, along with numerous other issues such as no ability to use UPnP to remotely connect, and a bit screwed up menu navigation. I subsequently updated this new Tablo to 2.2.2. which then allowed me to update to 2.2.8., where it now connects beautifully (but still eventually loses the connection after days or weeks). It now also navigates properly, but now has occasional LPWs and very rare reboots. There is now some additional weirdness in the aftermath of LPWs with blank screens, audio but no video, and no recognition of remote control inputs for prolonged periods.
The Nexus player solution is indeed superior for those users not interested in specific Roku channels unavailable on Nexus. The Nexus player is excellent when used with Tablo.
The Roku and Tablo played very nicely together for the 5 months from November 2014 thru April 2015, during which I bought 4 more Roku 3’s based on early satisfaction. Having a Tablo with old factory firmware yesterday until I did the updates further convinces me that the Tablo still needs fixing. The Roku has numerous crashes, bugs and faults, but FFReboots have not occured otherwise for me in years of watching Netflix, over a year of Amazon Prime, as well as dozens of other channels. LPWs have shown up on many channels, but only occur rarely, when the Internet or distant servers are choking.
Larry
I’m getting similar results with Nexus player. Scrolling/ FF is particularly smooth. I can FF thru 2 hours in seconds and stop on a dime anywhere along the way using the remote. Terrific improvement over my Chromecast. Channel surfing time cut in half. Utilizing a 2 way splitter I can also switch inputs directly to TV for instantaneous channel surfing. Good stuff.
I applied the update to 2.2.8 a couple of days ago, and it is generally working fine except that I notice a LOT of “lost connection/reconnecting” cycles now. I saw none of these prior to the update, so something in the link between my iPad and the tablo has changed with that update. No other issues seen with any other items pn my LAN, and only started with this update. Hope this is the right place to make this visible to the dev team?
The interface is fantastic, the viewing experience is absolutely the worst for any streaming service we use. This ROKU app has been such a disappointment. First it took over a year to have a decent interface and now it functions horribly. I am typically very supportive in all my comments, but lately I have wanted to throw something at the TV every time we are using this. Two issues occur consistently: (1) when you are viewing either a live or recorded show, it repeated stops and buffers the signal for no apparent reason. When it resumes you are subjected to viewing the previous 5-10 seconds (absolutely ruining the suspension of belief required for enjoyment). (2) This is the more aggravating of the problems. It gets STUCK numerous times when you fast forward. If you are lucky, it crashes the ROKU. If you are not it fast forwards and rewinds, or shows a black screen for MINUTES. We are forced to use the new interface to remind ourselves of what episodes we watched and then actually watch them on the LEGACY interface. This is getting so annoying, I wish I had just stuck with cable. We are EARLY adopters and even pre-ordered our Tablo. PLEASE NOTE, I even went to the expense of upgrading from a Netgear Router to a highly reviewed ASUS RT-N56U. Also, this all happens on all the Roku devices both wired and wireless. IT IS THE PROGRAMMING, not our equipment. PERIOD, END OF DISCUSSION. Guys, get your product working!!! I am running out of patience.
If it were the programming, then why would some Roku set-ups be working perfectly?
@tremjo - Which version(s) of Roku do you have. I don’t own, but from reading a lot of posts, it seems Roku 2 is a lot more problematic than later versions (more powerful processor-wise).
For myself, I had similar problems to you with 2.2.6, but the issues are almost completely gone with 2.2.8 (I still get an occasional short Loading Please Wait, but no other issues (Roku 3 and Roku 4).
If you have Roku 3 and still have all those issues, submit a trouble ticket to Tablo and let them dial into your device - they may be able to see what’s going wrong.
Either way, good luck. I know it gets frustrating quickly when things start to not work (particularly when they used to). But hopefully there is a quick fix to get you back up and running.
Like @ChrisFix, I went from huge problems with 2.2.6. to a vastly improved 2.2.8. on my 6 Roku 3s.
To @jdoe above, The problem clearly has to do with temporary loss of synchronization between the Roku and the Tablo, most likely arising from timing issues which can be significantly affected by network performance. In the same manner that only certain hard disks may offer sufficiently fast performance to satisfy the latency requirements of Tablo, certain networks/routers may or may not be sufficient,
I found months ago that using a 70 foot ethernet run to my Tablo profoundly caused more reboots, Ethernet is specified to 100 meters, over 300 feet, but the Tablo timing with the Roku could not even handle this 70 foot run after firmware was updated in April.
The point here is that extreme sensitivity to external conditions such as hard disk latency, network delays, etc. is a defect in the programming/design and can be corrected with proper engineering. Blaming the problem on the network, the router, the hard disk, etc. is a lame excuse.
Why not call it incompatibility and try a different streaming device? I did and rid myself of " issues ".
This makes too much sense…