Common sense says that something locally connected should be faster than something remotely connected. But I’m not sure about that. For example, I have two media players on my Roku for viewing films - Roku Media Player and Roxbox. I use the Roku Media Player for any USB drives connected to the Roku. I use Roxbox to access any network based drives and servers. For some strange reason I find Roxbox more performant than Roku Media Player even though the former deals with remote connections and the latter with local connections. How to explain Ethernet beating USB? So I’m not sure any longer that anything “local” will necessarily beat anything “remote.”
Netflix houses a multitude of static configs so they can deliver a dynamic changing bandwidth stream because the data is again… static… created by high powered back end servers instead of a small appliance on your table.
I know it “looks” the same… but it’s very very very very different. Even if Netflix got into live stuff… it would still be based on an infrastructure costing hundreds of thousands of dollars… and I imagine that might be out of reach even for the most serious cord cutter… yes?
If you want something a bit closer to Netflix (but still not anywhere close to Netflix) you can pull the shows off your Tablo using the plethora of programs the community have developed and push those shows into a media serving engine of your choice in any number of formats. That would be a bit closer to Netflix, but again, still not Netflix.
But I think we all understand the perception that Tablo == Netflix … now the question is… which one is really more inventive/creative? 
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There is a big difference between accessing a local drive (Dish DVR) that has a direct connection to a controller than to a network drive. You can do a simple performance test accessing both drives (local compared to network), and there is a huge difference in the amount of data that is accessed. A simple example of this is that I have a NAS server with disk drives that are considered network drives, and you can’t tell me that accessing files on a NAS server is the same performance as accessing files on my local drive. There is a good reason why the best DVRs on the market like Dish and Tivo have local drives. Even though they can have external drives as well, they each have local big drives to get the best performance. I would like to see Tablo include that as an option in their units.
Yep… right now the Tablo has a primitive ethernet and only USB 2.0. With that said, USB 2.0 speeds are good enough for Tablo, at least that’s what they say. Still, I would think there could be problems with 4 streamers (for example) hitting a single Tablo with a USB 2.0 drive. I mean it is one drive, so there could be some horrendous seeking issues.
So… what I like to see in the next gen Tablo is USB 3.0, maybe an eSATA and would love for it to have a 1Gbit or 10Gbit ethernet (with network storage support). But the cost of such a device could be extreme.
With regards to large single drive, Tablo fixed this problem with recent firmware. So you can attach larger drives to it than 2TB now… just has to be USB. In theory that backend could be a USB capable NAS, just as long as there is not noticeable “sleep” latency introduced (or you keep it running all the time… no sleep). Has anyone tried a large NAS via USB on it?? That’s a very good question…
(Not many would buy a large NAS and connect it to something USB 2.0… IMHO)
The price point for many is $200 (or in that area). The people to which I have recommended Tablo all desired a $200 DVR solution for their OTA needs.
I am not sure about that, because both Dish DVR and Tivo are around the $300 to $400 range. Adding a fast disk controller is nothing as far as the total cost is concerned. Adding in USB 3.0 would surely help, but that is even still much slower than a local disk controller. The disk controllers they have in the latest computers are really fast, and you need that kind of speed when delivering up high graphic content. I think it is all fine and dandy that Tablo supports 1080 HD, but that isn’t going to work very well using old USB 2.0 technology. I am finally starting to understand why there are performance issues with higher definition.
The people who want faster performance from Tablo seem to be “tech-savvy” people. Everyone I have recommended a Tablo to that has bought one, who is not tech-savvy in any way, has not mentioned Tablo performance once to me. They have all been satisfied with Tablo’s performance for the price they paid and the functionality they get.
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I think that’s because we know what stuff costs… to assemble something Tablo-like would be difficult to do on our own… you know?
I mean… we could buy a pair dual tuner cards (2 x $100). And house it in a cheap PC with two PCIe slots ($250 - 300).
Anyway, you can see how it doesn’t work out well…
You might say, just use a cheap ARM board and USB… uh… and how many USB ports does your ARM board have? And how many USB TV tuners have you had success with on an ARM board?
Again, it’s actually quite challenging.
HSN and QVC are both available as Roku channels, for free. Unfortunately, it will add to your data consumption, but streaming quality is excellent.
There’s also a PBS channel for Roku, but I don’t believe you can live stream.
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I’ve had no further LPW problems either. This is very promising.
Being that the issue was nearly ‘show stopping’ (pun intended), I’m assuming you will at least directly receive or be pursuing confirmation from Roku acknowledging the problem and resolution?
For Roku that is a significant problem fix. I’d have to assume it was impacting far more than just a few apps/services and wonder just how many workarounds each had to put in place on their servers to accommodate it.
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The best thing for us to do is probably post over in the Roku forums thanking them for resolving an issue that they either ignored or didn’t consider important enough to fix until a big dog like ESPN came barking.
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Here are the Top 10 Roku channels; Tablo didn’t make the list. http://cordcuttersnews.com/the-10-most-watched-roku-channels-in-2015/
I would tend to agree with you if I saw these issues with other channels. I have not seen these types of issues on any other channels, so it is my opinion that Tablo Roku app was possibly using the interface to Roku incorrectly. I am a software engineer, and so I can tell you from personal experience where I have seen this type of thing happen all the time where the interface does not get used correctly, or using the wrong interface, and so it can create all kinds of problems that may not be noticed by other consumers. Kind of interesting how everyone is so interested to blame Roku first when they may not be the only ones truly at fault here.
PBS makes available certain programs (not all) for streaming several days after they’ve been aired OTA. One has about a month to view them and then they are removed from their site. For instance, I record Downton Abbey OTA through Tablo but if somehow the recording should get screwed up, I know I have a chance (for a few weeks) to view the episode from PBS’s streaming site.
The reason PBS doesn’t retain these programs for a longer duration has to do with licensing issues. For example, Downton wound up eventually on Amazon after PBS finished OTA.
I’ve seen the issue on older recordings. It isn’t a big deal as I can FF a couple times and it’s done.
Roku 4 - 9044
4-tuner Tablo 2.2.8
I think it’s been mentioned previously, but it’s worth repeating.
Netflix “Super HD” bitrate is around 5.8 Mbps
A typical 1080i ATSC channel modulated with 8VSB might have a bitrate of 15 Mbps. If Tablo transcodes it down to a bitrate of 10Mbps, we’re still talking about a bitrate that is around 70% higher than Netflix Super HD. So Roku is going to have to work much harder to process the larger TS segments that Tablo delivers.
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Good on the stick now too.
You called?
Can’t hear you.
Only 2 of my speakers are working.
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