Open source the apps

I have been really hopefully about my tablo and getting my parents from paying 100’s of dollars a month to nothing for the 4 channels they actually watch. I have tried gave them all firesticks and rokus and there are three things that have kept them from adopting the tablo system. The app is unintuitive and hard to navigate. The app is slow and it is hard to tell if it is the antenna, app, or device that is causing the slow down. The app crashes from time to time, which doesn’t happen often, but enough to be annoying.

I have a solution to fix this. Make the apps/api open source and allow reviewed pull requests. I feel like the tablo team would benefit from hundreds or thousands of professional developers. People like myself can fix bugs, provide needed enhancements and overall create a better more intuitive app ecosystem. Help us developers out and let us fix some of these annoying issues without having to reverse engineer everything.

Have you tried the more powerful devices say Roku 3 Model 4230 or Fire TV box or Nexus Player?

The Stick models are pretty useless in my opinion.

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Yes, I have both firetv box,stick and the roku 3. It brings me back to my point it is hard to narrow down the point of failure. Something you don’t have to worry about with the satellite box. If it is not working then there is something wrong with the satellite. Which brings me to my point we should get some other eyes on the source to see if there are some easy optimizations to improve performance, and make it easier to debug. Let the tablo team focus on making the box itself rock solid and provide some great apis.

Pls see the following article on networks. In reading this form for a year it seems that the one big problem is the strength of the network wifi. When most have upgraded their router technology they have seem much better results from the Tablo.

This is from the Tablo man:

We don’t often share news stories on the forum but we’re making an exception for this because it’s such a great piece.

www.nytimes.com 29
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/technology/personaltech/if-your-wi-fi-is-terrible-check-your-router.html?_r=2

If Your Wi-Fi Is Terrible, Check Your Router

Many frustrating speed bottlenecks at home can be traced to that dusty old box in your basement.

If you’re not router savvy, this is a great overview the technology and terms you need to know as well as offers a suggestion for a good quality WiFi router at an affordable price.

Several Tablo fans on Facebook chimed in to say that they love this router (the TP-Link Archer C7) and that it really helped improve their cordcutting experience.

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This likely will not happen. The Tablo works well on my Fire TV box, not so much on the Fire TV Stick.

As well, before I upgraded my router to a dual-band router I was having buffering problems. I upgraded to the TP-Link TL-WDR3600, the the Fire TV on the 5 GHz band and it works great.

  1. What is the make and model of your current router?
  2. Is the Tablo hard wired to your router?
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I have the firetv/roku box wired into the router asus 66ac. The tablo is wired too. Once again to reiterate my point it would be nice if the apps were open source so we can add useful features, simplify the interface, and add debugging information for us. I mean if you think of it a team of twenty can’t compare with a team of a thousand. I would rather have the tablo team focus performance and core features on the box itself and the apis, than all the usability issues that other developers can help out with.

@lhops - We do eventually plan to release our REST API so folks who like to tinker can. However, we still need to do a lot of work on documenting the API so you can make sure you’re using the correct calls.

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If tablo has time for RESTful API’s it also has time to participate, with it’s tuner supplier and media players, in version 7 of HLS and ATSC 3.0.

Not sure I understand that. How does them having time to do one thing mean they have time to do something else? What am I missing here?

While a few may think RESTful API’s are important there might just be other important work going on in the industry. Additionally, tablo has a long list of future feature requests, a new roku app that is long overdue, and a few too many problems in version 2.2.2. So why spend any R&D money on RESTful API’s. Does this imply that the tablo server will become an open server?

Does tablo actually participate in the on going standards committees that affect the future of the product. And if not why not. And if so what direction is the product taking in response to these ongoing industry changes.

I am still unsure of where you are going with that. I would agree that following an industry standard is a good way to go. But without inside knowledge into whether or not that is feasible with the current hardware and software, I believe the next best thing is to get the developers in the tablo community something to work with.

I applaud the tablo team for listening to its community and setting priorities in alignment with what the community needs to continue moving the platform forwards. I hope that once the foundation work is laid and that the apps are open sourced that the tablo team can focus on more important things like building the next generation tablo (following industry standards or developing new industry standards). In the mean time we can let the community manage some of the feature requests and usability issues for some of its apps.

Thanks tablo team, please open up the apps sooner than later.

Dosn’t the current tablo software adhere to various standards that are changing. Are you expecting ATSC 3.0 to work on your current tablo? If HLS 7.0 is adopted by various media players will tablo take advantage of it’s new features,etc,etc

Are you also implying that tablo users as developers will be integrating their changes into the tablo product. Developer are expected to make their source public. If these developers make their products available what will be the licensing agreement: MIT, apache, GNU, or ?.

I am not expecting developers to make changes to the core tablo product (aka the box), but the apps themselves that use the box. As for a license agreement that is really up to the tablo team and developers.