I don’t watch TV every day. Sometimes it’s a week or longer. So just about every time I want to watch, it means a several minute wait for the thing to sync. And then, whoops - can’t cast to chromecast from my Chromebook so now I have to launch the app on my phone and wait for THAT to sync. Why aren’t you guys just having the box serve the content via HTTP? There is no web page I go to on the internet that takes so incredibly long to load content. It seems like you’ve complicated it for some unknown reason at a significant cost of having a usable UI.
Unfortunately, this thing just doesn’t pass the family acceptance test. I’m still hoping you get closer with the Roku app. Fingers crossed.
The expectation is set by cable set top boxes, which display the guide almost instantly. They must keep it up to date incrementally, since after a reboot or reset, it takes a while for the guide to become available. Seems like Tablo may not update the guide frequently enough.
Is it the GUIDE that’s syncing so long - or the recordings and other areas? My PC is connected most of the time and sync with it takes seconds. My phone gets used every couple of days and it takes maybe a minute to sync.
MAYBE mine doesn’t take long (when things are working correctly and it’s not in a snyc/connect loop as explained in another post I made) because my network is fast and stable. Tablo is wired to the router. The router is a 300n device so can connect at 300 Mbps, my notebook connects at worst 150 Mbps, up to 300 at times. The wired Ethernet in Tablo is only 100 Mbps so they could also benefit with a new Ethernet chip in the box for 1g speeds.
If the Tablo is Wi-Fi connected AND you are using Chromecast and a PC or phone, you are hitting your Wi-Fi for everything that goes on.
Tablo access requires an Internet connection if using an Android phone or a PC as the web apps requires it go through the Internet to their server - That’s what I wish they’d change asap.
But for sync, I never run into the 3 or 4 minute range, at least I have not had that when things were stable, especially since wiring the Tablo directly into my network and not letting Tablo connect Wi-Fi.
The pretty images are cached locally (on your browser). It’s probably the longest part of the process. Since your browser isn’t “on” all the time, there’s no way to background cache these to the client. Maybe for the non 24x7 client, it would be wise to just give a non-pretty view. In fact, some here actually prefer just a list view vs. the pretty graphics.
Now… maybe it won’t matter that much, I’m sort of guessing that it’s the image data that makes it as slow as it is.
You’ve probably already found out that if you use the Tablo via browser often, the cache stays more up to date and sync time is shorter.
Phone web app also has to do the whole cache thing… but conceivable that with the owner’s permission, that it too could do some sort of background cache.
LOL - my Chrome browser is on all the time. If my computer is on, Chrome is up and it appears to auto-refresh as the program guide is always showing the correct date and time and currently playing shows just as it should, even if I leave the computer for a few hours. It mostly syncs after new recordings.
I just switched tabs and for the first time today looked at the program guide and it’s displaying the correct shows for 6:30 pm on sunday so it’s kept up since i’ve not looked at that tab since early AM.
As I said before … store everything on the tablo itself … eg “pretty pictures” and just “serve it” on demand to the viewing device as its requested. and only give the viewing device just as minimal amount of data it needs to display the current screen… there is no reason to shove two weeks of data down to the viewing device.
I don’t disagree but that would mean a start from scratch for Tablo in some respects.
It could be a client/server thing, more like a web-based or browser-based database app. Our own in-house app keeps everything on a SQL server, you run the browser to launch a Sharepoint based interface. Nothing is ever synced to the local computer. You click the browser-based interface buttons, that sends commands which manipulate the database, create reports and so on.
Nothing downloaded or kept local.
Frankly I also don’t get the whole reason to sync anything to a local device - keep it on the Tablo and let the browser request an image to display or current data, etc.
A web page can easily display dynamic content. In a very simple basic form used to keep current information in a text file on a server - the text file was kept current by a series of scripts I had that made FTP calls to another server, and when you visited a web page on the web server, the information displayed came from that text file on another server, nothing was synced locally. The pictures would be kept on Tablo, basically nothing synced to the local computer. You open the interface and it makes the “HTTP get” calls and if nothing has changed, the Tablo web server, a stripped down lean free server, either gives the current info or pictures or if the picture hasn’t changed since the last code the PC or android phone sends to the Table web server, Tablo sends a status code 304 (not modified) meaning if it’s in the browser’s cache, display whatchagot.
i'm thinking that once tablo gives the option of a text list instead of show art, this may improve, no?
Yes ;-)
They may be clever and smart but what’s being suggested is more than adding a feature, it’s a re-write of a lot more than the Tablo’s internal app.
Like I said - fast network it seems that sync doesn’t really take long, even for several days of info, so perhaps just optomizing the current sync process could help, or make some things work while it’s syncing or arrange what syncs first.
i'm thinking that once tablo gives the option of a text list instead of show art, this may improve, no?
Yes ;-)
They may be clever and smart but what’s being suggested is more than adding a feature, it’s a re-write of a lot more than the Tablo’s internal app.
Like I said - fast network it seems that sync doesn’t really take long, even for several days of info, so perhaps just optomizing the current sync process could help, or make some things work while it’s syncing or arrange what syncs first.
I dont want to name names but there is a competitor product to the TABLO that doesnt employ any “sync” whatsoever and it seems to be fast and works without having to sync data to the viewing device… I don’t see why the Tablo folks cant borrow a little of that secret sauce for their far superior product.
(for the record I work in IT and I have a degree with CS with a lot of programming in my background so yes I realize what it might take them to accomplish this …)
Huge tablo fan here. But i agree. Sync is a bitch. Every time i want to use my phone or ipad…gotta sync. I don’t use it often as i use my roku, but when i need it, i can’t use it.
My iPad’s Usage report says that the Tablo app itself is 14.2 MB and it’s “Documents & Data” is 71.5 MB. I typically get better than 30 Mbps download to my iPad; so downloading 71.5 MB should take about 19 secs if it’s done all at once at 30 Mbps. I’m sure there are lots of people who don’t have that much bandwidth who are waiting a lot longer.
My thing is being unable to figure out why I can download from the web a 200 meg file in seconds but a simple sync takes even just a few seconds. Luckily I rarely wait for sync, honestly - even if the phone is disconnected from our Tablo and away for 2 days, when I connect again it’s just literally seconds, no real wait at all, nothing to complain about, so there’s got to be something else to it. How it does the sync, writing to the device, something’s up.
I deal with this sort of thing daily in network/LAN and WAN support - I can skip a big document across the state through a VPN tunnel faster than you folks are saying you can sync 70 meg of simple data across the room on a local network. I agree in that I don’t think sync is entirely “necessary” but even if Tablo says no, we must keep it, we will keep it, it’s hard to imagine what the bottle-neck is. Why is is that slow?
I can download a web page with a dozen images faster - from the WEB - than what people here say it takes to move less across a home network. There’s something rotten in Denmark - or perhaps Canada? ;-)
@ericgus - I wasn’t arguing your thought that sync could go away, in fact if you read sort of between the lines, I said I agreed it was strange to do it like that based on what we KNOW for fact. And good to meet you - I’m not much of a programmer in that respect - I am an analyst, systems architect, designer, troubleshooter turned network administrator for a government agency. LOL - I tell the programmers what we need.
The API that the web & tablet apps use appears to be inherently “chatty” The messaging protocol used is WAMP-based and the messages are all JSON serialized rather than say MessagePack, which is more efficient to exchange. A big part of this API is concerned with the registration & validation of clients, most likely to facilitate the Tablo Connect functionality. And has other have mentioned, syncing 2 weeks of guide information plus associated metadata & cover art takes a while, especially if you haven’t synced in a while.
Clearly with the Roku app re-design, there is going to be a big update to the “stateless” API for “dumb” clients. Whether any of this is going to trickle down into the web / tablet apps to improve the overall experience (i.e. a little wait for each operation vs. a longer wait at the start) remains to be seen, I guess.
Coming from SageTV will a full fledged computer running everything… There are two main issues that affect the WAF:
1. Syncing. We have 3 different iPads and only use them for Tablo occassionally (most viewing is thru Roku) and having to Sync for multiple minutes each time we want to use them (especially when we only want to use them for short periods on the iPad) kills her interest in the Tablo on the App 2. Roku channel is lackluster. The new revamped on will help a lot, but the lack of FF/RW preview might send us to FireTV’s which is a pity since I love being able to listen to the show from the remote if I stay up and she goes to sleep… I pickedup a FireTV Stick to try it out.
