It’s been a long time, but we’ve been very excited to get back to work on Tablo’s ROKU channel. A brand new update should be making its way to your ROKU devices right now.
This release is mostly under the hood updates, but there is a brand new feature: WATCH NEXT.
In each recording folder, this button will allow you to immediately play the next unwatched episode in the series without having to jump into the episode list. This should help all of you binge watch fans
“Support for newest Roku video player software” - would that make the colors more vibrant but the picture less sharp. Or maybe if you watch enough tablo recordings on the previous player the new player looks a little different - at first.
Thanks for the “watch next” - it was on my list if “things I’d like to ask Tablo for” Hopefully that’ll in the fullness of time make it to the other UIs as well?
Technically it’s already on Android/Amazon Fire TV. If you hit ‘play’ vs. ‘select’ when you have a series highlighted it’ll play the next available episode.
What constitutes ‘next unwatched’ in the Tablo database?
I’ve recorded most of the seasons of Barney Miller, and most of the episodes are still unwatched. Clicking ‘Watch Next’ in the Roku app (or clicking the Play button in my new Samsung Tablo app while the series icon is selected) starts playing Season 8 episode 10 ‘The Clown’. That’s not the [newest, oldest, top, bottom, most recently recorded, oldest recording].
In the series ‘doubt’, the same Watch Next (and Play button in the Samsung Tablo app) plays Season 1 episode 3, which is the oldest episode recorded but it was already fully watched and there are other unwatched episodes.
The fact that Roku ‘Watch Next’ and Samsung Tablo app ‘Play’ button select the same episodes in each case (and others) makes me conclude it’s not random behavior, but I can’t discern the logic.
@TabloTV, can you explain in more detail what database attributes are getting used here so we can understand what Watch Next will get us?
“Watch Next” at the series level was a highly requested feature. Requesters claimed all the major DVR software supported it. Maybe “Next” is kind of nebulous term.
‘Watch Next’ is supposed to choose the next airing that is in season/ep number sequence that is playable or for non-seasonal series or sports/movies/etc, move to the next newer one from previous.
This is dependent on three main things:
The metadata attached to the shows themselves… So if some of your Barney Miller shows don’t have a season or episode attached to them, ‘Watch Next’ will pick the oldest recording
What you were previously watching in that series… So if you were watching season 8 episode 9 before, it makes sense that Tablo is serving up season 8 episode 10
The firmware you were using when that episode was recorded… Before 2.2.10 there was no concept of a ‘Watch Next’ order in Tablo’s logic so it could be misfiled.
There it is. My Barney Miller episodes all have season info. The key on my experiments was the ‘last episode that had been playing’. I also see that if I exit the episode list and come back in, that ‘last playing’ episode has a triangle icon upon it.
Also, since this is a database attribute in the Tablo, it appears that if you’re watching Season 3 episode 4 of a Series in the kitchen and exit, then move to the living room, select the same Series and click Watch Next, you pick up where you stopped (as long as multiple people haven’t been watching different episodes from the same series). Excellent . Thanks for the enhancement, Tablo!
@TabloTV you omitted to mention one improvement that I immediately noticed and appreciated.
When I fast forward, thumbnails now appear on the higher speeds and not only on the slower fast-forward. THat’s helpful, since it was a major pain to try and guess where in a show I was fast-forwarding to.
The text overall seems more crisper and legible as well, which is noticeable and looks pretty good. One of those things one only notices by comparison - like when I sit on the ophthalmologist’s chair and I have to choose between “this one” and “that one” -
I wish I could find one thing to complain about the new version. I’m so disappointed.
You could complain about how it doesn’t have commercial skipping built-in.
Although I found a couple of commercials I like. I even saved a couple to my Plex server but I can’t figure out how to get it to do things with them.
Specifically: there is (or was) a cute parks commercial of a deer and a girl having a staring contest that cracks me up every time. And the longer commercial for The Orville; “that’s not a mint” .
I already complained about this in general - it’s not app-specific and I was told that those devices that do have this only have it because they have a plethora of trained humans flagging the ads in specific shows.
@TabloTV - the new Roku App has been working great (Roku firmware 7.7 4154). However the “broken fonts” (see this previous post) are still there in the Recordings listing. Maybe the upcoming Roku 8.0 firmware will help.
My Roku App updated last night. FF/REW progress indicator is different now. Didn’t see any other obvious changes, but did not look at every screen. @TabloTV do you have a list of changes?
I’m so disappointed.