For those not in the know, I’m talking about this:
After a day with lots of inconvenience to a large number of Tablo users, to date this has been the sum total of Tablo’s response.
No identification of the root cause, no assurance that corrective and/or preventive measures will be implemented.
It is a good way to make us realize how much we are at the mercy of Tablo and their servers for the continues use and enjoyment of our purchased equipment.
I really believe that Tablo should be more forthcoming about how they will prevent this type of issue in the future, and perhaps it is also beneficial to at least my peace of mind if I l can be reassured that Tablo will, in the longer term, work towards reducing our reliance on an Internet connection and their servers to be able to continue enjoying out OTA television broadcasts.
I can understand that I need to obtain the guide data from somewhere, but apart from that, why is there a continuous need to call home before I can open a web browser to watch my Tablo? Surely, in the longer term, that is also a cost factor that Tablo should consider in that their servers would have less load if there were fewer services that required them?
We all know what happened with Pebble smart watches after that company couldn’t remain viable. Fitbit took them over and eventually closed their servers, leaving users with so much junk silicon. Now it seems as a definite outcome for Tablo should things turn out not as we all hope for.
It is quite possible Tablo is going to be forthcoming and is still in the process of gathering data as to the what and why of yesterday. Give them a little time and patience.
I can understand that looping in Tablo’s servers is a good way to make Tablo full featured yet easy to use. I do not understand why advanced users can’t just point their browsers to a Tablo’s local IP address and use it entirely independent of outside network services, even if with fewer convenient/pretty functions.
Yesterday changed my opinion of Tablo from “easy recommendation to make” to “can’t recommend,” but clarification and perhaps some small changes could switch that back again.
A reply to my support ticket came back from Tablo:
Feb 12, 1:25 PM EST
Hi there,
The Tablo servers experienced a brief outage yesterday and this morning. This could have caused some connectivity issues with http://my.tablotv.com/, some Tablo applications, and the subscription potal at https://account.tablotv.com/.
Everything is up and running now. If you try to reconnect, you shouldn’t have any further issues. If you run into any problems, reboot your Tablo and try once more - or reply to this email and we’ll take a look.
I came to TabloTV via the SimpleTV route, so my eyes are wide open. The TabloDVR hardware has no long term value without Nuvyyo service and support.
My +1 comment: building resiliency into the my.tablotv.com web application similar to the Roku and FireTV apps makes sense. In this outage, the Internet to my.tablotv.com was solid, but no LAN based fall back was provided, like we have for “connect via WiFi” when the TabloDVR is not found on the LAN.
not sure if it will help, or if I’ll get it finished, but this may be useful for folks who need some more standalone independence from the cloud components of the device. It’s a tricky balance because the native web app needs to call home so you can connect remotely. I very much doubt there will be a big repeat of the front end issues from yesterday but it will be nice to have a standalone client if I can get my act together…
Thank you everyone for your patience over the last few days.
Between the afternoon of February 11th and the morning of February 12th, Tablo’s servers experienced a series of outages due to a bug between two processes. This bug has been fixed and we apologize for any inconvenience it caused.
We take outages very seriously. We are currently reviewing our infrastructure design to ensure server capacity continues to scale with customer demand, and plan on implementing additional monitoring and alerting processes.
It should be noted that our servers have enjoyed a 99.87% uptime over the past year, including planned maintenance outages.
HOW SERVER OUTAGES AFFECT YOUR TABLO DVR
Server outages only impact out-of-home streaming via Tablo Connect and the ability of some Tablo apps to connect to your Tablo OTA DVR. Scheduled recordings and recordings in progress are not affected.
All Tablo apps – except apps for web browsers (my.tablotv.com), Smart TVs, and Xbox One - are designed with a fallback mechanism to connect to the Tablo locally if the internet connection is interrupted.
Apps with this fallback mechanism will continue to provide access to live and recorded TV via your Tablo regardless of server status.
Thanks for the explanation, I’ve been on that side of situations like this and in my opinion the priorities are always identify and fix the problem first, then follow up with explanation when you have all the data. Kudos for your approach and following up.
Yes, from a pro-datacenter protectionist position. However, from a pro-consumer position, you want to hear:
“We are currently experiencing technical difficulties that are affecting the ability to use our application via web browser, and possibly other services. We will try to keep you informed as we discover more about the problem. We do not as yet, have an estimated time for being back in service. As such we will make additional posts every 15 minutes until we have an adequate solution or workaround in place. Thank you for you patience on this matter.”
Something like that would have been nice (vs crickets).
All Tablo apps – except apps for web browsers (my.tablotv.com), Smart TVs, and Xbox One - are designed with a fallback mechanism to connect to the Tablo locally if the internet connection is interrupted.
This is unacceptable. I was under the impression that I had cut the cord and was not aware that an internet connection to your servers is required so that my TV could connect to my Tablo DVR.
Can you please re-design all devices to have a fallback mechanism.
Have the Tablo servers been down again??
I’ve been attempting to watch some recordings on my Tablo since ~4:30am this morning.
I’ve tried using my web browser (Chrome) on 2 different PC’s, tried my Roku and tried the Tablo app on my Android tablet.
I tried rebooting my Tablo to no avail.
The only useful info I’ve received is on the browser. I keep getting the message “Cannot connect to Tablo servers”.
My Tablo is online. On my browser if I enter the Tablo IP, I get the message “Nuvyyo Tablo Server”. If I enter the Tablo IP:8885/guide/channels, I can see info from the Tablo. I’ve even sent UDP packets to the Tablo and get the correct response.
My Tablo is online.
Now it’s just after 6:00am and everything is working again. Go figure.
This is such a frustrating problem. I should not be required to connect to the Tablo servers just to watch recordings already on my Tablo. The only reason I should require an internet connection is to update the TV Guide, to get firmware updates and to access my Tablo remotely. Otherwise an internet connection should not be required.
The Tablo DVR is such a great product for cord-cutters. It’s ashamed that loss of Tablo Servers causes this product to be rendered useless.
