If this has been covered or if I am missing something, I apologize. But it seems there is a severe limitation in the two recording options. REC ALL will record all iterations of a show which means it will record duplicate after duplicate of the same episode. REC NEW will only record episodes marked as NEW. So if I want to build a collection of say, old “Twilight Zones”, my only option is REC ALL because none of those will ever be marked “NEW”. But I will end up with many many duplicate episodes.
I have only had Tablo (4) installed for about a week, and it has actually gone very well and is working almost perfectly. I am currently cranking up the recording of virtually everything just to stress it… and so far no issues. I could not find anything online that described the REC All as I described it above, but I have noticed in my first couple of days recording that I have duplicate episodes so it does appear to be working that way for me. If that’s not how its designed, please let me know and maybe I need to do some poking around.
Tablo says they are working on a smart record feature... And anything will seem smart compared to the current methods.
@bromo999 after setting rec all for Twilight Zone, your best bet is to go to the scheduled view every week (because the second week of show data is notoriously flaky) and uncheck the duplicates. I made the mistake of thinking the conflicts view would be the first place to go to fix duplicate recordings... But no, if you resolve the duplicates (across all shows) allot of conflicts self-resolve.
Disclaimer: my Tablo always has a few failed recordings in the day or so after I make many manual corrections this way... But I have dozens and dozens of updates to make weekly.
@bromo999 - Thumbs is correct that we’re working on smart record which would allow you to avoid duplicates from re-broadcasts or duplicate channels. Stay tuned!
@Thumbs, thanks for the advice, I will start doing a weekly review. And thanks both of you for the quick response and feedback. I feel like right now there are no show-stoppers but then I’m really just in that shake-down mode (I really don’t need every episode of 11 1950’s sitcoms and westerns) but I’m trying to push it. So far my impressions of the Tablo are positive, I think it does what its asked to do and I look forward to the forthcoming upgrades.
But whether or not I actually “cut the cord” completely is in doubt, not due to any limitation I see in Tablo but more so because I’m not sure how to get or replace certain cable-only shows that my wife seems addicted to… such as 6 hours a day of ID channel “How to Kill Your Husband And Get Away With It” shows.
I'm not sure how to get or replace certain cable-only shows that my wife seems addicted to... such as 6 hours a day of ID channel "How to Kill Your Husband And Get Away With It" shows.
Bob
Yikes! Maybe cutting cable would be a good idea in that case! :))
@bromo999, it’s a cost thing. It may well be cheaper to purchase the episodes/seasons through something like Amazon Prime… have you looked to see if the shows are carried though such? I’m just trying to think of ways to allow you still “cut the cord”… also, if today they are “cable only” and never made available in any way… keep checking because more and more show are moving to more contemporary direct methods. So… even if you can’t make the full cut today, maybe tomorrow it’s a different story…
Not sure how this fits into everything, but the same show on different channels sometimes use different titles… and of course it’s possible for the same show to have different titles even from the same channel (and yes, I realize that’s probably not fixable).
@cjcox - The title data comes from our guide data provider. We can work with them on data quality issues. If you have an example of this ‘same show different channel different name’ we can certainly approach them on this.
@Flatulator - We’re working on smart record and delete right now which will be coming in the fall. I can’t say if it’ll be ready for premiere time or not yet.
Tablo is fantastic for show discovery! However, getting multiple copies of every “I Dream of Jeannie” episode is filling up my 2 TB!
Please say my Tablo will soon not record an episode that it’s already recorded! Oh! And, also please say that soon it will auto delete the oldest recordings when space is low.
Tablo is fantastic for show discovery! However, getting multiple copies of every "I Dream of Jeannie" episode is filling up my 2 TB!
Please say my Tablo will soon not record an episode that it’s already recorded! Oh! And, also please say that soon it will auto delete the oldest recordings when space is low.
@ericgus Oh what station is playing I dream of Jeannie?
It's called Antenna-TV in my market. It is the CW's sub-channel on our dial.</blockquote>
Fwiw I contacted ANTENNA TV to try to get them into the Boston area as well as send a email or two to a few stations seeing if they would pick them up… seems like a really good station!. Thanks for the tip!