Initially storing in MPEG-2 video and then converting to h.264 video at a later time still would not solve the delay in waiting to tune Live TV because the Roku for example cannot play back MPEG-2 video. Nor would the Roku be able to playback the recording until after it was converted to h.264 video.
What are you proposing the Tablo do with the native MPEG-2 video if it recorded it?
Sage recorded native ATSC mpeg2 streams for HD and also mpeg2 for SD. You may recall there were quality settings including āDVD High Qualityā for example (also mpeg2). Sageās optional transcoder to h.264 provided a nice way to make BluRays post recording.
Their UI was fast and not especially pretty, but rock solid in my experience over 10 years. The electronic guide search features were top rate ā show me all upcoming programs with Marilyn Monroe, for example. And Jeff / Narflex / founder and software engineer was totally accesible all the time. Too good to be trueā¦ And software licenses for server and client were like $69 and $29 respectively or thereabouts. A very hard act to follow, and profoundly better than competing PC-based alternatives IMHO.
Tablo has a ton of new advantages and is a really visionary ambitious product. It just needs time and effort to get it finished. It has great thinking and execution in so many ways and I personally support it and will buy 2 more Tablos when they get the wrinkles ironed out. Too many players makes their job very difficult.
Larry
Does it take 15-20 seconds to set up MP4 translation from MPEG2 (even on the fly)?
Iām not really proposing anything. We are just throwing ideas out there. If I were to propose something, I would say allow for an option/checkbox to allow shows to be transcoded to mp4 as a background process.
One of the major benefits to me of Tablo vs. Sage is that it is a dedicated system. If I need to reboot my PC, or want to shut it off at night, I could not if Sage was recording because it was on my machine, and I did not want to dedicate a full computer for TV recording.
I got rid of Sage because of the Google buyout and lack of future support for HW that one day would eventually die or become obsoleted by a new version of windows.
I am probably not typical on the Live TV side, I never use it. I only use Tablo to watch recordings.
Same here. No device can beat my LG and Samsung TVs for reception sensitivity or speedy channel hopping. Nor can any MP4 translation come close to pure MPEG image resolution especially for live sports events. By definition, MP4 as a compression technique loses resolution.
Simply compare Downton Abbey on PBS when it is shown OTA with the web site versions displayable through a Roku. Night and day difference. Thatās why I was using Handbrake to preserve as much of the bit rate as possible on Downton in converting the episodes to MP4 for viewing through the Roku. Several years ago the Roku only accepted half the bit rate for MP4s that MPEGs had.
Well I am sure it takes 1-2 seconds for the conversion process from MPEG-2 video to h.264 video. The Tablo builds a 10 second buffer of h.264 video before it starts streaming on your device, say a Roku.
You need data to stream to thatās likely why it builds said buffer. Thus inherently you have to wait for that buffer in real time.
Why does one need a buffer starting at Frame 1? Does one need to rewind in the first 30 seconds of a show? The Roku Media Player starts immediately without any delay so it doesnāt expect a buffer from the other side.
I am not sure, I wouldnāt be surprised if the Roku video player needed a minimum length of HLS segment before it could play. That video player is the most picky of any device Iāve ever used.
There is likely a technical reason for it rather than just an arbitrary buffer.
I requested beta through support and was just told it will be available in a few hours on my device. Anyone in the recent list here operating on any betas past 2.2.6? Iāve asked for release notes and/or known bugs, but havenāt gotten a response yet.
OK but we still have the situation where the Rokuās own player (RMP) is much faster on starting a video than Tablo. And the RMP typically has to deal with a web server in Windows which is not the most optimum server in the world. The best video app (most efficient) I have on the Roku is Roxbox which works through Linux and Apache (super fast).
In my own mind Iām not sure this delay is because of buffering. Allocating and filling buffers is a micro-second operation. I was at a company that dealt with real-time communication and we discovered two problems in communications throughput - a database issue and a node resolution one. We had to convert to a real-time, in-memory database (such as Berkeley DB) from a disk based one in order to expedite communication. Who knows where delays actually come from?
Tell me about it! The first two Rokus I had (going all the way back to Roku XDS) tried our patience DAILY! Every Tuesday and Friday, my wife would ask, āIs it Roku reboot time?ā
Thatās why I prefer to have two 2 tuner Tablos to one 4 tuner Tablo. Redundency and double processing power. I have learnt my lesson over the years relying on ONE box to carry a heavy loadā¦
What is the startup time of a video or live TV on a non-Roku device such as the Nexus Player?
New 2.2.8. Firmware installed-
Several hours of Tablo viewing on 2 of my Rokus, my wife doing laundry watching one show, me watching another Roku, and FINALLY NOT ONE SINGLE REBOOT !!!
A couple LPWs but no other issues. Connections and navigation seem quite smooth and responsive.
Thank you Tablo !!
UPDATE DAY 2:
2 days of viewing without reboots !!!
The LPWs are quite rare (1-2 per hour) and are not nearly as annoying as the reboots used to be. The playback on iOS and Nexus are better, but the 6 Roku 3ās are now very usable.
UPDATE A COUPLE WEEKS LATER:
Still quite stable with a few LPWs each show but very very few FFreboots. Occasional weirdness with loss of video but rarely occurs. Generally acceptable performance.
Updated the Tablo on Thursday night, since the update I have had the Roku reboot itself quite a few times. Once last night the reboot was preceded by the remote not being responsive. This occurred after FF thru about 30 minutes of a show.
There have been times where the LPW will still appear and we are forced to manually reboot the Roku. I typically watch recorded shows on my laptop, but with the family in town for the holidays, Iāve switched to the Roku for a little while and as a result have just now been seeing what everyone has been talking about.
FWIWā¦
Was watching Netflix this weekend and while the show was playing it suddenly froze. After a short while my Roku 3 on version 7 rebooted. Iāve had reboots on Tablo, Hulu and Netflix now. That being said, I havenāt had any reboots in Tablo for quite a while since I switched to using the FF button to advance through commercials instead of the directional keypad.
Since the last round of updates, I have been getting almost constant reboots. I wish I could downgrade to get back to a point where it only happened occasionally. I have also seen random sluggish controls, that lead to an eventual reboot, these seem to have something to do with thumbnails being generated ( no thumbnails before the reboot, but they are present afterwards ). I am also getting tons of random loading events, where it backs up and replays a small amount of the show. This got really bad when I got the āprettyā UI update on the Roku channel.
My standard use case is for NFL games, so I use the left and right to advance ( so I can consistently get a 110 second forward for the commercial breaks ). I use the manual recording ( not the guide ), and I usually start watching a game about an hour after it begins ( so the thumbnails arenāt present most of the time I use it ). During one game yesterday, it rebooted 14 times ( in 3.5 hours of content ). I had one game yesterday that it rebooted 13 times, that is nearly every 15 minutes and the commercials might take less time, and certainly less frustration.
This has gotten so bad, I almost put my Tablo on EBay, and I am starting to watch live TV again. I hooked up my old mythtv box to watch Sunday Night Football, because I was about to throw my Tablo through my living room window. It is bad enough that last week when asked about it, I told someone that I couldnāt recommend the Tablo in its current state. This is sad because it used to feel unfinished, now it is just broken.
Both the Tablo and the Roku are hard wired on gig ports with only 18" of cable on each connection. My Roku works flawlessly for everything else I use it for, as do the other 2 devices on that switch.
Tablo software 2.2.8
Roku Chanel 2.0 build 15
Most people who have these problems have solved them by going to a different device such as a Nexus Player or Nvidia Shield rather than ditching the Tablo. My next door neighbor has a Nexus Player with Tablo and performance has been absolutely flawless in a home theater environment. Others here have the Nvidia Shield and likewise its performance is great. Ditch the Roku and unload the frustration - that simple, that quickā¦ 
@CraigRoyce recommending that I buy a $200 device to make the $400 device work seems like a pretty awful solution. This fails to address, that it did work pretty well just a month ago, and the updates are really what broke it ( I even directly mentioned wanting to downgrade ). Your recommendation also tells me I should have spent the $500 on the OTA Tivo. By the time you add up the $200 for the Tablo, $150 for listings, $50 for a external hard drive, and $200 for a shield, we are up to $600. I agree your solution is simple but likely not cheap, It did work on my Roku a month ago, what do I need to buy when the next update breaks playback on the $200 device you told me to buy?
The fact that the Roku works flawlessly for the other 11 media channels we use, tells me the problem isnāt the Roku. I had never had a random reboot on any of the 3 Roku boxes I have purchased over the last 6 years, and I had a 1st gen Roku that my stepson still uses, and we have 2 Roku 3 boxes currently. I even tried a Chromecast ( since I had one lying around ), but the video playback was atrocious. Again this is despite the fact that the Chromecast works fine for Netflix and Amazon.
Again, it was working on my Roku at the 30 day mark, which was the only reason I paid for the guide info, instead of returning it ( and that was only 9 weeks ago, I bought it primarily to watch NFL games ). The product was advertised as working with the Roku and it mostly did until a few weeks ago.
@John_Clark He also recommended a $50 Nexus Player. Shield is ideal but the Nexus Player still handles Tablo significantly better than Roku. I wouldnāt act so perturbed by innocent suggestions by people who want you to have a better experience. Obviously we canāt fix Rokuās problems. The best we can do is offer a better alternative that is proven universally to work well.