I love the idea of a whole-home OTA DVR. And overall I think the Tablo is a great device, and I don’t expect it to be perfect from the start (of my experience with it). What bothers me are missing features that are basic DVR fare and bugs I’ve found, all of which I see people on this forum talking about, often from 2015 or even 2014. Does Tablo fix bugs? Add features?
Pausing Live TV, playback restarts on its own
Guide is slow to populate when scrolling
Tweak start and end times (try recording “60 Minutes” during football season!)
Limit the number of recordings kept per show
Can’t set manual recordings in Roku app
Bulk deletion of recordings
“go to live” functionality for paused live TV
I hate for my first post in this forum to be a gripe session, but it really bugs me that I bought a device with numerous shortcomings that I see other users pointing out for two or three years! I mean, Tablo makes like ONE product. Why doesn’t it improve over time?
I am glad to hear that you are happy with your Tablo. But, I think if you read some more of this community you will find that there have been many improvements over the last 2.5 yrs. You should also realize that the thousands of us that are very happy with Tablo don’t spend a lot of time here except to try and help others out. Over the last 2.5 yrs I have had some rough spots but have received a lot of help from the Tablo support group and this community to make things better. My biggest problem ( and I think many new to Tablo have ) was the strength of my local area network LAN. I have added three extended airports to my Airport Extreme router and this made all the difference in the functioning of Tablo to 3 tvs, 2 ipads, 2 iphones and 2 computers using 2 rokus, 1 nexus player and 1 Mii box. Some are wired and some are wireless, but they all work very well. You are right tho, it does not have all the bells and whistles of Dish and Direct, but then I have saved over $2500 since going with Tablo and I watch about 2 hrs every nite ie 3x1hr shows minus commercials. And I have about 1.3 TB of tv on my HD and rarely have a problem watching anything I want!
I assume your main interaction with the Tablo is with the Roku?
You can bulk delete recordings on the iPhone app, Android app for smartphones and tablets, Fire TV app, and also using the my.tablotv.com website on your computer (PC or Mac).
It is unfortunate the Roku app can’t do it, but this is infrequently used feature so being able to do it elsewhere on multiple platforms ain’t so bad.
I am mistaken, I just checked out my Roku and you can bulk delete on the Roku.
Select a show, hit “Delete…”, and then you’re given the option to Delete All Recordings, or “Delete XX Watched Recordings”. The XX is just the number of recordings you’ve watched, so mine said “Delete 13 Watched Recordings”.
One of the toughest parts for the Tablo folks is having to work and troubleshoot apps on multiple platforms. And for every UI feature that is desired, it means work on all those platforms.
There have also been quite a few firmware releases by the streaming hardware platforms that break the code.
Many of us on this board are Tablo owners from the beginning, and we have definitely seen significant improvements over time. On the other hand, there are longtime feature requests that I am surprised haven’t happened yet (mainly the keep X recordings and adjusting the start/stop time).
So I spoke with Tablo support this morning again. The device seems really nice but WHY the constant hanging of shows or lock up of deveice when it is processing 2 or more channls at the same time? The more tuners used the quicker the freeze and fail. They are investigating. I know otherss have had similar issues - So any thoughts?
Tablo is passively cooled and gets quite hot (and hotter the more tuners used). Have you tried turning the Tablo on its short side, so that the bottom is completely exposed to air, instead of against a surface.
Keeps my 4 tuner a lot cooler, and others have reported it has fixed freezing issues for them.
Just a thought…
As I said above- before putting 3 extended network airports around the house I had the same problem you have. (just too many walls in my house for strong signals everywhere) . I also have my Tablo setting on a laptop fan.
Yes. I read about the heat issue when investigating the device. It is on its side and does not feel to warm… My son has a fan blowing on his. Waybe I have to try to add this. Not sure how based on when the Tablo is.
I wish that was the issue. My signal strength is at max on all devices, The Airport shows Tablo speed at 144 mbs and Apple TV at over 500 mbs. Not an issue that I see.
I appreciate all the points of view. Yes, my main interaction is with the Roku, with iOS second. Roku is the most popular streaming device on the market, so it’s app should get plenty of attention, IMO.
It’s just really hard to believe that so many basic features are missing. I consider things like start/end time adjustments and limiting the number of episodes recorded to be “brain stem” functions. I’m shocked that they aren’t there, and based on people asking for them for a long time, I’m wondering if they ever will be there.
I like the analogy, but the function of the brainstem is very basic such controlling as breathing, heart rate, swallowing, being awake. The brainstem does not provide you with memory, language or executive functioning - that is the frontal lobe.
The Tablo has the basic DVR functions, 1. it turns on, 2. it tunes OTA channels, 3. it records episodes automatically, 4. it allows playback of said episodes, 5. you can delete an episode after you’ve watched it.
If I was a DVR, I’d like to have Tablo as my brainstem.
These are WAN / WiFi speeds. I only have 2 devices hardwired and neither has anything to do with TV. Tablo support just replied after examining my device. Here is a clip of their response: “We managed to review your Tablo’s logs and confirm that a firmware failure resulted in a brief period of inactivity. We intend to address this issue in our next firmware release…”
They are adding me to a Beta test of the new firmware - hope it works.
What version firmware is loaded on your Tablo? If its new it probably has 2.2.12 and
thats a stinker release. You can open a ticket to have it back reved to 2.2.10 which works pretty well. It will take a few days to get this done.