Tablo really needs to improve quickly or they'll lose even the early adopters

jdoe, I’ve got Roku’s on 4 TVs in my house, I like having a consistent interface everywhere. Right now, my Tablo can’t be accessed from anywhere, not even Android, IPad or computer, and I just invested in Roku 4 to fix some of the performance issues.

The problem on Roku4 was identical to Roku3, no performance difference in playback. The “Loading Please Wait” still occurs in the same place. Since Roku issues seem to be getting lost at certain frames during playback (consistent which frame it is), reboots when you FF and hit play on a frame, and I’ve experienced very inconsistent wait times when FF and hit play, sometimes in an infinite wait, but I get instant playback when I FR 1 frame from the stuck spot (frame is there, and plays instantly). It seems like the ROKU Tablo app may be getting confused with the frame to play, and either takes time to get to the right frame, or just crashes the ROKU. Just my thoughts, but these issues may all be inter-related, and not ROKU performance related from what I’ve seen.

My network should be able to handle the bandwith of a 1080P show. ROKU should be able to handle it, especially since ROKU4 is touted to handle 4K streaming. I have a gut feel (since I program RT streaming with another app), that it’s a frame calculation issue/synch problem that exists only with the ROKU Tablo app. Perhaps, frame/time return issue when you FF or play. I’ve had instances where TABLO will jump backwards a few seconds and keep playing the same loop over and over.

First a big thank you to everyone who posts in these forums. I have been an avid Tablo user for most of the year and your comments and advice have immeasurably enhanced the experience, and offered very practical help. You have also allowed me to be part of a community, even as a silent participant to have modern kind of “water cooler moments” about TV. Second, a huge thank you to the folks behind Tablo. It is brilliantly conceived and provides exactly the base of core services I wish.

I have signed in, though, to add my voice, and to add another customer’s request to @tabloceo and @tablotv. I am a veteran software company CEO and I know how exhilarating, challenging, rewarding, and uncertain these kinds of things are. I’ve deeply admired the spirit of good will and relative openness you’ve shown in Nuvyyo (such as this forum). I think what is called for now - and you are seeing a rising chorus for it - is a new level of comprehensive candor.

I am very lucky in that I have a very high-end, robust installation and I have stayed on the pre-2.2.2 firmware from past experience of waiting to see what happens - which incidentally works very well with the beta Roku app. As a result, my Tablo experience on all receiver platforms (and I use all platforms) continues to be excellent. Of course I am stuck until and unless the new firmware’s bugs are sorted, and although I understand why you are profoundly reluctant to offer the option of rolling back to firmware 2.1.30 (let alone the possible technical challenge of making different firmwares loadable), I deeply feel for all those whose Tablo experience is now so degraded (even with some feature upgrades).

My hunch is two things are going on inside the company: 1) you have to watch your competition and not give them any competitive sticks to hit you with, especially with the holiday sales season upon us, and 2) you don’t know how to solve (perhaps even to isolate) the problems introduced, or let loose, with 2.2.2 and 2.2.6. Whether that is right or not, I empathize with the situation your are in.

You really, I think, need to give us champions of your product and company a way to keep the faith, though. You are at a tipping point, I think. So, one customer’s advice is to either tell us the clear roadmap you are following to fix this (pull back the curtain, as difficult as this is, and let us know really, in detail, where you are), or, tell us that you don’t know what’s wrong, but outline the kinds of steps you are taking (other than asking for bug reports) and what your fallback is if you cannot resolve it by X date. One possibility: re-releasing old firmware 2.1.30; I know you don’t want to do that after all the effort of rewriting the operating system, and the reasons for a new OS, but by some X date, you’ve go to get back to a pretty much universally stable product.

We’re at the point that business openness is the most important thing for Nuvyyo’s future, I think. I am fairly sure you don’t have the resources many imagine you do (or that you wish to have some day), and I know what’s it’s like trying to project confident scale (like painting Number 7 on the side of a company’s only truck), but we admire what you have done and you are past the point that you can afford more negative reviews on Amazon. Let your community of supporters inside the tent and give us a reason to cheer you, instead of hoping we’ll stand by.

It is time for something real from @tabloceo - first a candid statement of where you are, what you are doing, and what your fallback plans are, and then even something as radical as moving Roku out of main product support, if the rest of the bugs with other receivers are genuinely rare or clearly fixable with time, or rolling back the firmware for Roku users. My external sense is that you’ve about used up the time prior goodwill will buy you, and you need to build some more. Seeing the spirit with which you have run things to date, I know you will receive this in the spirit of best wishes it is offered.

This is a brilliant innovation. Thank you for it.
(And thanks to the Community for tolerating the long post.)

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I am truly baffled by the current Roku/Tablo situation. Some have all kinds of trouble (with different network setups, Roku models, recording qualities, etc.), while other don’t experience any issues at all.

My Tablo got queued to update to 2.2.6 late in the cycle, and I got to read about the 2.2.6 problems people were encountering. With some trepidation I updated, and the first time I access the Recordings screen it took much longer than usual - and I thought that I was going to have the same issues - but the next day everything was back to normal access times. There has to be more going on here than meets the eye. I hope that @TabloSupport can get to the bottom of it.

I upgraded to 2.2.2 firmware and not 2.2.6. I noticed a performance difference between 2.1.x and 2.2.2 when loading the recording list, etc. And the performance gets worse when a tuner is in use, i.e. the tablo is actually doing work.

And I’m not a digital hoarder. I have two tablos and only keep a few non-watched recordings on the tablo servers.

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I would like to see an official bug tracker that would allow users to know if an issue they are experiencing is already known and documented - ideally with some info on resolution as I stated here:

You will never know the actual bug list unless there is a class action suit (or arbitration) and you ask for “discovery”. Even then you would probably be restricted on disclosing what was “discovered”.

Sodaman_2000 - You say “If you want top of the line audio and video performance, open your wallet and pay for it!!”. While I can’t speak for others, I am not expecting anything more than what Tablo was advertised to provide so I’m not sure what your point is? Are you suggesting we shouldn’t be disappointed if we bought a device that advertised 1080P capability but it doesn’t even seem capable of performing reliably at 720P?

TabloInTheCity - I like the candor of your post and agree with most of what you’ve said. I also hope that management at Tablo takes some of your suggestions to heart.

Hey folks - We appreciate all of your feedback and we do take everything to heart.

You can read a message from our CEO on the current issues here: A Message from the CEO of Nuvyyo

So I’m wondering how the most strident amongst us react to the CEO’s statement:

“These symptoms are currently only affecting a small proportion of our customers, but the number of affected customers is growing.”

Of course, if your Tablo experience is poor, the fact you are part of a “small proportion” may not be comforting, but the fact that your experience is poor does not mean all is doom and gloom for Tablo.

I really don’t think that the 2.2.x tablo firmware is as messed up as this forum makes out.

Now we at least know what tablo thinks the issues are. But debugging problems is a completely different skill set then designing or writing code. So it’s yet to be seen if tablo can debug these problems.

Even symptomatic problems that might give better insight to actual bigger issues don’t seem to have been debugged.

The one I love is where right out of the blue at the same time both the WEB app and the Roku preview channel can discover the tablo but can’t connect. But the original Roku channel keeps chugging alone with no problems. You would think it would be pretty easy to determine where all those connection messages disappeared to.

I know the router ate them.

I used to work for a small (in this country at least) printer manufacturer and had to deal with all sorts of issues in regards to why our PS driver wasn’t as tolerant as Xerox’s or why we made it more difficult on 3rd party suppliers of consumables than others. Was there pressure from customers to “come completely clean” to them who would never breathe a word wink wink nudge nudge? Sure. Did we ever do that? No.

We were the fast and cheap option. We weren’t the good and fast or the good and cheap, we were what we were in the “Pick any two” triangle. Notthatthere’sanythingwrongwiththat.

I am overjoyed with the results (why just having the option of recording OTA at these prices and my own laziness!) Maybe it’s the vodka but it is what it is for now. If you have patience it will most likely get better. If you can’t wait, pick something else as others have stated. If you just wanna complain, well I guess you can do that too. Whatever gets you through the night, no one calls the help desk to exclaim how great everything is.

I have not tried another streaming box. Roku still comes up as the preferred streaming solution in side-by-side comparisons and I’m fairly invested having three of them. Roku channel is part of the reason why I pulled the trigger on the Tablo

So I signed up for the beta firmware and a couple of days ago downloaded an update and (fingers crossed) it seems to have resolved most issues. Load times are reduced and I haven’t had a fast-forward reboot in a couple of days. There’s hope in Tablo-land once again!

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My Tablo has been nothing more than a brick w/ a blue LED since last Wed. or Thurs., and I still haven’t heard from technical support. Not happy about missing a weekend of football! :frowning:

This was my solution to cut the cord, but at least cable was 100% reliable…

Nope, I don’t see that problem at all. Three Roku 3s in my house. They all FF fine with no rebooting.

@Chris_Soignier - The team spotted your ticket from yesterday. We’re going to touch base shortly.

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