If tablo was exactly like all the other competitors why would someone buy a tablo DVR? Since I already have a lifetime Plex pass, why wouldn’t I just power off my tablo, power on my Nvidia Shield attach my Hdhomerun Connect and record away.
While I’m sure adjustments to conflict management are possible doesn’t the user really want to record the shows that were scheduled? If not why are they scheduled in the first place? Why not just buy another tablo and record everything that the user wanted recorded? It’s not like users are paying TiVo subscription prices for additional units. A 2-tuner is on sale now for $99.
I pondered on this for a moment, and thought, yea, why not. It’s serious resolution. Not saying it’s cheap but it’s a one-time expense and you’re done… it’s not so much spread out over time.
I don’t think I’d go that route, but if you get a lot of channels and have regular conflicts - it’s a reasonable option.
One question is does automatic prioritization really work very well for recording “All New” episodes when there are really conflicts.
Say you have a 2-tuner and have 3 shows that possibly have new episodes at the same or overlapping times. And you prioritize the shows as 1=Jimmy Fallon, 2=SNL, and 3=Jimmy Kimmel. I don’t watch any show where guests are political or some celebrities. While some guests on these shows may interest me way more then others. So how do you use automatic prioritization in these situations. And if you can’t and have to evaluate the conflicts why not evaluate all the conflicts.
So you would advocate for, say, a car that has one door and a stick instead of a steering wheel–because “if that carmaker was exactly like his competitors, why would anyone buy his car?”??
We’re talking core functionality. There may be many ways to handle schedule priority, but giving the user the ability to handle it AND make it automatic so it’s not an every day juggling is a core feature that a DVR maker should never have gone to market without.
Sure, improve on things. You’re right. But don’t make your thing worse just because “I don’t want it to be like the competitors” as a blanket concept.
Make the priority handling BETTER. Give me a hierarchy that includes things like guest stars. Let me rank what’s important to ME. Right now in WMC, for example, the only priority is the show title and time (I can rank Big Bang Theory, for example, at 8pm differently than the reruns at 6pm and 730pm). Improve on that and let me define more things in a hierarchy.
But let the machine handle the day to day tedium of managing what I want.
Make it BETTER. But don’t just ignore it on the basis of “I don’t want to be just like the competition, otherwise why would anyone buy mine?”.
I was replying to “why should they do what everyone else does”. I say, take the core concept of what others have done, what consumers like, and MAKE IT BETTER.
Do NOT just sit there and say, “I won’t honor that core concept because it’s what others have done, and I want to be different.”
Your analogies are frought with hyperbole that they make absolutely no sense. Just make your feature requests and leave it at that. Tablo will listen to you appropriately.
It’s not that he’s incapable. It’s that he expects the machine to let him defined his requirements, and then automatically continue to do what he programmed.
He does NOT expect to go in, daily, and check to make sure that what he wants to record is recording.
Bully for you. His expectation is way different than yours.
Apparently, in this hive mind that is this forum, that’s not allowed.
This what it comes down to. Each user has potentially different needs. If you record a ton of content then knowing the possible “limitation” regarding recording conflicts is useful, but then it’s up to the user to decide the priority (ironic eh) of the features they are looking for. Every DVR out there has pros and cons.
For me, I was coming from a 4 tuner OTA TiVo Roamio so I knew I would need the 4 tuner Tablo for my needs. Even with all the content I record I generally have at max 3 tuners in use so I can’t say I’ve ever had a recording conflict to deal with.
I knew I was giving up a few features moving from TiVo to Tablo but I was also gaining some features (key among them much more reasonable subscription costs and streaming to other devices I already owned) and for MY needs the Tablo had far more pros then cons.
I don’t necessarily consider myself a Tablo fanboy, I like to think of myself as more a factulist and a realist and for me the facts and realities of how I use a DVR are best served at this time by Tablo.
The good news is we all can agree we prefer non-cable company provided or leased DVRs and telling those providers to shove it with their fees. For me that list happened to come to include TiVo.
That’s my take on it pretty much, I only have 10 channels on my tablo, and only record a few regularly. Conflicts are seldom, things is, when they do happen it’s annoying.
In the end… how important is any of this programming really!?! Considering all the options, and stored shows, loosing one isn’t as bad as having the conflict in the first place.
If you try to schedule a show that creates a conflict, it will let you know right away. And if you continue, you can go into the conflicts screen and resolve it for any episodes in the two week window.
It won’t resolve for a whole season, so if you set up three different weekly recurring shows (on a two tuner) on the same time, whatever you did for the current two weeks won’t continue. It will default back to the third show not being recorded.
So the user has to continue to re-visit the conflicts page to make sure that what he wants is going to happen.
It’s fascinating that snowcat then says:
I just don’t see the issue. A user is given all the tools to resolve conflicts.
yeah, except the tools one really wants and are useful.
In fact, OTA Tivo even gave up the game of showing a low hardware price while pricing the (mandatory) guide service separately. The price you see is the price you pay, and you get a fully functional OTA DVR.
But Tablo continued down that path of showing a low hardware price that doesn’t include guide service. Go figure.
And no, I won’t acknowledge in any way, shape, or form that guide service is “optional”. Just because someone says it, doesn’t make it so in the real world.
You said a user has to go in every single day to check for conflicts, which is clearly not true. And if you just resolve the conflict issue to begin with (as in don’t schedule three shows at the exact same time), then the issue is solved.
The tools are there. It just depends on whether the user has any brains at all or not.
Why isn’t it? New guide data come in every day. If I want to make sure I have no conflicts, I must check on the results of the new data.
I must do that because I have no other tool with which even to set my preferred order of programs for the system to follow, should there be a conflict. Instead, it simply follows things in the order in which I put them on the list.
Ohmigod, did you just say that? “It’s simple–don’t use it as a DVR, and don’t expect the computerized device to have any computer smarts from 1960.”
Yeah, that’s the answer. “Just don’t schedule conflicts, and you’ll never have any conflicts and you’ll never have to visit the conflicts page every day to make sure no conflicts came up. The tools are there. It’s quite simple, if you have any brains.”
I am not saying that a user won’t have conflicts. I am saying that when it happens, the user has the tools to resolve it, which is usually to stop recording one of the series.
Even in your perfect world where conflicts are resolved by another method, something is not going to be recorded. It is much better to just deal with the issue when it appears so that the user isn’t upset that something isn’t recorded.
Most shows are scheduled at a certain time for an entire season. So if there are the same 3 shows you are seeing week after week creating a conflict on your Tablo 2 tuner, either remove that 3rd show from your schedule or buy a 4 tuner Tablo.
