Apparently part of the issue with your testing was the number of recordings you were creating during the day was larger than average. That coupled with the low upload speed was causing backlogs.
We haven’t finalized the minimum ‘safe’ requirements yet, but we’ll definitely have that info when we’re ready to go with the open beta.
It’s probably safe to send an ex-hardware engineer who is now CEO to Vegas. Too nerdy to get into very much trouble.
But I’m surprised ben1 wasn’t there and didn’t sneak up on him to steal his polo shirt. It would be a great addition to his cordcutters coffee cup.
Very interesting. Does thumbnail generation also involve sending data to your server and back? (I’m thinking “no”, that this is a first)
I guess I give you kudos for handling this, but sort of an awful way. I mean, are we “done” with what Tablo can do on it own? I guess I find it curious that this feature was deemed as high importance when it involves sending video content to your server (apparently) for processing… I wouldn’t think that would be ranked as high on the priority list (I feel something else pushed you to doing this now).
Maybe related to the cloud storage solution? Perhaps you figured it could be used for compute and space on the more mainstream Tablos for this purpose?
I love to speculate…
Various OTT products have no commercials - for a price.
People get on all the various forums and complain about commercials. So various DVR products have commercial skip.
You have to keep up with the Jones one way or another. And here is a link to a Plex WEB page on their commercial skip. Of course as typical Plex it has tons of options to please everyone. or no one.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/115003944134-removing-commercials/
How will videos marked up for commercial skip affect ripping them from the Tablo to move them to external targets such as Plex? Would they be playable other than through a Tablo?
These rippers, like SurLaTablo get their data from the playlist. So if the playlist is a modified playlist, that’s what will be ripped (no “commercials”). Again, depends on how they are doing this.
How successful do you think Tablo’s algorithm can be? After ripping a video from my Tablo, I manually go through it to cut out any commercials if I want to save it in my library forever. Do you estimate Tablo can emulate a thorough, exhaustive manual process?
My guess is that like commskip and such (Plex DVR), that it will make mistakes. Just as SurLaTabo’s commercial cutting mechanism makes mistakes (but it’s quite limited, so it makes more).
Nothing beats the human machine, you know?
Thanks, because I have two use cases for extracted videos - (1) save them for future viewing (in a few days) without saving them forever, and (2) save them forever in a master library whether I view them in a week’s time or years from now. In the first case, missed commercials are OK but not in the second case.
What about any ability to disable the upload/commercial skip? I don’t want my limited upload bandwidth being used for the feature when it’s needed for work. I know I’m probably in the minority, but I don’t mind clicking a few times for a very few seconds to manually skip.
I used Tablo Ripper to rip recordings that had been marked with the commercial skip feature and they ripped just like any other recording. The entire show and all commercials were ripped to my new file.
Yep, as @3rdRockOKC said, stuff pulled via Tablo Ripper isn’t affected. The source video files are exactly the same and untouched, it’s the playback devices using the Tablo app that see commerical breaks that have been marked and can skip them.
It’s 100% opt in for that very reason.
We always try to add features solely using Tablo’s local resources when possible because we know not everyone has fast, unlimited internet.
However, commercial skip processing requires computing power that Tablo doesn’t have nor was it designed for. That’s why it’s not a feature we were able to pursue previously despite the fact that it was ALWAYS one of the top requested features.
Providing fast-forward preview frames was a good alternative that DOES use Tablo’s own tuners and processing power, but it still requires users to pick up the remote control.
This new commercial skip feature is much more lightweight in terms of the amount of data that needs to move back and forth than anything we’d explored previously. Yes, it still requires the computing power of the cloud but based on the data we’ve collected in customer surveys we felt that most Tablo customers would have the bandwidth to make it work well, and without a significant hit to their datacap.
Will the commercial skip feature have the ability to enable/disable the feature on a per channel basis? I ask this because PBS doesn’t have commercials during the show, so no need to waste resources.
I have 150/150 fiber without a cap. I’m a perfect test guinea pig ha
Maybe it will smart enough to skip the 15-20 minutes of wasted time occurring during a sporting event half time.
And after a year or two of AI learning maybe it be able to skip the unfunny monologues at the start of various late night talk shows.
Given the Tablo’s hot running temperature, will the life of an internal hard drive be effected?
This new Tablo Quad looks like it will passively cool better than the OG Tablos.
Not doubting you, but could you explain what about the new unit leads you to this observation?
I’m guessing because it looks like it has better ventilation. Of course the fan mount on the bottom of the one at CES gave many hope as well…