The main reason I want a DVR is to watch shows a little bit later than they start. Some shows I record every day such as the nightly news but I prefer to watch them 15 minutes or so later so I can skip commercials, or just for the convenience. With Tablo I am able to do this, and I can fast forward, however no thumbnails and not even the video goes by when fast forwarding. So tell me. How the heck are we suppose to know when a commercial ends? I mean this is laughably ridiculous. And its enough of a reason to return it to the store.
No thumbnails or video on fast forwarding of currently recording shows, no customer. Its as simple as that.
Then best you return it now. It doesn’t generate the thumbnails until the recording is finished. That’s just the way it is, and it’s not going to change any time soon. If ever. Which I doubt.
Same for the commercial skip functionality.
There’s some very technical reasons why it works this way, but no point it telling you about them.
Most Tablo apps will offer fast forward preview thumbnails on recordings so you can easily skip commercials or find a particular segment of a show.
Fast forward preview thumnails are only available on completed recordings.
Thumnails require a free tuner to be processed and takes approximately 4 minutes per 1 hour show.
Missing fast foward preview thumbnails? Live TV and in-progress recordings are unable to offer this option. Completed recordings missing thumbnails may have video errors preventing their creation.
Learn more about how Fast Forward Previews work and which apps support them on the Tablo blog
Thanks. That’s what I thought. And it’s too bad because its a nice DVR otherwise. Maybe the engineers can think outside the box and think of another way to generate thumbnails. I was really trying to get rid of the computer I use for Windows Media Center, but the thing hasn’t let me down in the many years I’ve been using it.
All the recording work is performed by the Xcode processor. Tablo just uses the Pixelworks stack and API’s to cause the recording and playback to happen.
So it probably isn’t going to happen without changes to Xcode. And tablo has multiple versions, old and new, of the xcode processor.
It ain’t a bad DVR. I just have to decide if I can live with it or not. Most commercials are about 3 minutes. This thing fast forwards a lot better and faster than Windows media center. I bought it at Amazon the other day for $129 and I see today at BB at $99. Wonder if Amazon will match that? That ain’t a bad price for what this thing does. Runs good on my N router. Only real complaint is the one stated.
While I’m here, how does this thing work without a subscription? I understand I only get 24 hour guide but can I have it record every big bang theory that comes on in the future or do I have to tell it to record it everyday?
If you don’t have a subscription, you can set a manual recording for a specific channel and time. But you can’t record by “show”. There are other limitations as well. For something like this, just include the subscription cost in the cost of the device, and decide if the total is worth the value I get. I would never pay a monthly subscription.
The other point is, once you embrace the DVR lifestyle, you don’t even think about when a show is on, you just record it then watch them all later. We always have dozens of hours of content available to watch whenever. The only exception is sports and certain shows that we need to watch in almost real time.