It’s not a perfect analogy though is it, because when I got my Tablo it already had the commercial skip.
I like you do choose to not get the upgrade because it works fine the way it is but still it’s just the principle. The amount customers pay monthly, yearly and lifetime is enough to cover any and all upgrades. I had PlayOn with a lifetime subscription for a decade, it went through many upgrades yet they never expected me to pay more.
I have a 2015 Mazda and will be in the market for a new car next year. I had no idea they were changing their infotainment. I hope that change doesn’t affect texting or limit music providers.
Yes, I know this isn’t Tablo related. But… Now I want to know more about this change Mazda made. 
I’m not remembering them ever, during beta, saying this was already a part of the subscription, just that the decision as to whether to charge extra for it was yet to be determined at that time.
In other words, they didn’t say it was and go back on that, they never said either way until recently.
Software development cost money. And certain new features like commercial skip require costly infrastructure. This is not how a business operates unless you want Tablo to go bankrupt lol Then you’ll have a very expensive paperweight.
Tablo never once said that com skip was included in the lifetime subscription price.
Before you stick to your principles, read this review.
The AirTV 2 lacks so many “basic” features the Tablo has. The AirTV 2 has, I quote, “no visual preview when you fast forward or rewind through recordings”.
I’d never heard of the Air 2 before…it does seem sub-par…I have Sling, but I’ve never liked their interface
You seem to be very annimated by this offering by Tablo. The beauty of the market is people can choose to buy or not buy what items or features they want. Many of us pay for commecial skip because we believe it adds value. You obviously do not. Great. Do not pay for it, no problem.
There are many things in this world that people pay for that I think are of no value to me. So what?
I do not care what they spend their money on and they should not care how I spend mine.
Commercial skip works for me most of the time. It is not perfect. But for the low annual fee I find value.
My mom feels the same way regarding my annual recognition of Mother’s Day.
“annimated”? How did you get past spell check on that? I thought it was some adjective I was unaware of, not sure how I’m animated. As I repeated, it’s just the principle of the thing. If you think paying more for every little feature is a “value” of course you may do so. I’ll stick with Tablo as long as they don’t add anything to the lifetime payment I made.
Paying more for additional features is kind of normal. The nice thing about it is, it’s your option to either pay and enjoy the feature or to decide that what you have is fine and you don’t need it. It’s a “value added” item.
I wanted a way to get out from under the soaring cable and satellite bills, but we really needed DVR capability. Tablo fit the need. Then they offerred the beta of commercial skip. “Cool! We get to use it for free while it’s in beta!”. I never expected they’d just “toss it in” once they had it to a working condition. They never said that and in fact stated quite the opposite. The service has incurred costs for Tablo. They can’t give it away for free. I’m not sure what all the blustering is about. If you don’t want it, don’t subscribe. It’s really simple.
This may be where the divide starts. For me the addition of commercial skip functionality isn’t a “little” feature, particularly since they determined the best way to implement it was via cloud processing since they indicated it can’t really be done on device. A “little” feature to me is changing the live TV guide to show 14 days of data since that’s not implementing a new process, just displaying more data for an already established process.
Cloud processing to me would inherently add cost to the service so if they determined in the end it was more cost than they could just absorb since not everyone is paying an ongoing monthly or annual fee for the guide service, so be it.
They could have gone the route of just increasing the guide subscription cost for anyone who wasn’t monthly or annual and even those that didn’t use commercial skip would be shouldering the cost but they chose to give people a choice so that the ones shouldering the cost where the ones actually finding value in the service.
I’m not sure why people keep saying I’m “blustering” or “annimated” when I’m just giving my opinion. I saw no information when I paid for the service that there’d be an extra charge for ad skip once it was out of beta. I can’t think of another example of a service charging more for a new feature once it’s out of beta, that isn’t normal at all. The main issue for me is the alleged value of the ad skip, which doesn’t even work a good percentage of the time. I shut mine down even before the deadline to do so before being charged. As I’ve agreed to repeatedly, if you want to give more money to Tablo for such a near worthless feature that’s up to you. I wouldn’t even have it enabled if it were free.
My remark wasn’t directed at you specifically, jimwg, and my apologies if it was taken that way. I guess the long and short of this is that some folks feel it wasn’t explained to them sufficiently (or at all) depending upon when they purchased. When I bought in, it was before com skip and I had a pretty complete understanding of where it would go… which is where it is now.
I also understand that for some folks it works pretty well and for others it just plain doesn’t. It works for me.
I otherwise am happy with my Tablo Lite. I too wanted to be able to DVR local channels because my wife and I save up all our shows and watch them on Tuesdays. I used to have DirectTVNow before AT&T ruined it, I dropped it for Philo which has nearly all the channels we use with an excellent DVR but no locals. Fortunately I can get all available OTA channels locally from my antenna set up so Tablo got me back the ability to DVR shows from ABC, NBC and CBS (the latter I couldn’t even DVR on DirectTVNow). The picture quality is superior with Tablo and I’ve otherwise experienced no other problems with it. I don’t even mind the time lag when I click on a channel for the show to come on I’ve seen others complain about. I compared several OTA DVRs and even with the price of the lifetime guide Tablo is still the best value, that is as long as they don’t keep adding more features with more cost other systems already have with the beginning cost.
When the Tablo was first released, guide data was free, though it was clear that subscriptions would be created at some point.
Cloud DVR was in beta for over a year, and then the Tablo folks started charging for it.
I also think of numerous video games have free betas and then charge once the game is officially released.
lol… so glad I switch to HD Home Run with plex. Tablo is puke.
Happy you find something that works for you.
The very fact that quite a few Tablo users are this animated about paying for CS should be enough for Nuvyyo to make a mid course modification to the fee structure to give “lifetime” subscribers at least some additional value. Since within your 3-tier pricing structure you’re charging $24 to monthly subs and $20 to annual subs, how about $15/year for “lifetime” subscriptions? Personally I’d like a one-time additional fee, but any concession would be Nice.
I hear you, but you can’t get blood from a stone. That’s not a slam on Nuvyyo, it’s just means you can’t get cloud computing for free, you know? The Tablo end device is cheap because it’s built around a low power SoC. It’s not a 64-core Epyc in a tiny form factor… So, the best way to provide a heavy feature was to offload it to better computing resources. But that isn’t free.
Trust me, I can build you the DVR you all really want, but would you pay $600 or $1000 for it on top of EPG fees?
Nuvyyo’s gamble is getting enough subscribers to pay for the cloud computing. Because you certainly aren’t paying even enough for “1 core” of the smallest cloud offering out there. You’re paying for about a tenth of that with their pricing. Just something to think about.
2 of your 3 examples are Tablo again. With your 3rd example you haven’t cited one of a game which, after being purchased, tests a beta version with existing customers with the understanding they’ll have to pay more after the version is made to work. Usually a sample of customers are asked if they want to try the beta version and are given it for free once it’s working.