I think you’d find picture quality on a streaming device is better than through the LG TV. At least that’s how it is with mine.
Still having problems. I made the mistake of trying to change the channel. Nothing is loading now.
NFL+ has the best controls at least on the Roku. Get out and go back in and your at the beginning of the game on any other device where on the Roku it takes you right back to where you were.
I’m new to Tablo. Is this a regular occurrence?
I would not say it is a regular occurrence, but it is not the first time. Others have had more problems than I have had.
Tablo is working on a permanent fix but it is likely going to be a while.
It’s a bit crazy that I can’t watch local live free tv without my tablo phoning home 24/7. Thanks.
I agree about the controls being good on Roku, but the ONN Google TV 4k streamer does the resume playback correctly too. I am torn on their press the middle button twice for pause, but it seems fairly consistent across most of their apps.
I think the Roku NFL+ app fails on two points.
- It randomly crashes way too often. I watch every NFL game replay, and in a typical week, that app crashes about a dozen times. Some full game videos crash at a specific playback point ( usually where they clipped the commercials ) and won’t work at all, until they re-edit and re-encode them later in the day, or even the following day.
- Because they post process the video differently, the condensed replays are usually about an hour later than either PC or Android. Playoff games were ready as condensed within 20 minutes on PC, but took nearly two hours to show up on Roku.
It happens often enough that the subreddit is downright hostile about it. The opening NFL weekend was an all day Sunday outage, and they had no support that was visible until Monday.
More accurately, they say they are working on it, but the issued press releases claiming this in the second week of September, last year, which I will point out was nearly 5 months ago.
I have a theory they have one support person, and they likely contracted the software in 2022, and haven’t had a full time engineer on staff for the last 12 months.
I have worked on far more complex embedded devices and most of the companies in this space are way too cheap to hire qualified software engineers. When I lived in LA, there was a medical device company that kept trying to get me to take an on-site job for $70k, when my WFH paid twice that, and that is fairly consistent within the embedded space.
we should be able to watch live TV without an internet connection, albeit without an updated guide. You should be able to upload your user viewing stats periodically when the internet returns, but not lock us out when your servers aren’t working correctly or the internet is down. My guess is if server connections weren’t required prior to watching something, this device would function much more smoothly and quickly.
I completely agree. All of the data communication should be async, so it doesn’t get in the way of using the thing. The Tablo guys are so obsessed with data mining, that they never have data to mine. If the thing worked, people would use it more, and they would have more useful data.
Brilliant comment.
Agreed. As a new user to Tablo over the past few days my #1 issues is the guide not loading (occurs at least a couple of times a day so far), which is very frustrating because it should use local cache of the daily cumulative update, right?
Beyond that everything has been GREAT and will be improved when I get a better antenna that I can point correctly towards the towers in my area.
Tried using gen 4 Tablo on a ShieldTV last night. The home screen would not load and eventually popped up a cancel/retry option. Retry just repeated the unproductive spin. When hitting cancel I was able to go to the Library tab and watch recorded shows, but could not get the home screen to load. I did not try the live guide screen.
I would like a reply from the Tablo developers — why would you prevent the app from loading if there is no network connection?! I understand that selling our usage data is your core business, BUT the application needs to continue operating, allowing me to access the tv channels if the Tablo servers are down. I’m a software developer and if I was on the dev team I would insist on a request timeout fail over to downgraded function, but not NO function!
They made business decisions, which caused a real world mistake.
Business decisions…
Provide free guide data.
Provide free streaming channels, which require internet.
Streaming channel ad revenue is used to pay for streaming channels, and guide data.
Streaming channels must load to make revenue, so wait for them to do so.
Real world mistake…
Can’t watch any live TV, even OTA channels, when internet service, or Tablo servers are down.
Whoops, who would have had the foresight that user internet service, and Tablo servers will not always be up?
Everyone needs to remember that normal non-DVR, simple tuner based televisions for ATSC 3.0 won’t work effectively without Internet. Just something to keep in mind. The future…
I am also a developer, and I’d make that a background thread so that it didn’t affect the user interface at all. If it fails, it fails, but the user doesn’t see any impact on performance. The data simply gets sent later
It’s been mentioned before but make sure you have Tubi set up as a backup. Just in case.
General observation. OTA used to be the “king” (why? because as long as you have reception capability, it’s pretty much always there) vs sports streaming.
So, sort of strange hearing a streaming thing displacing OTA.
Oh, and hopefully Tubi holds up under load.
I go Tablo, then Youtube tv, Tubi as a last resort.
I was not aware of that. Tubi is one of my favorite free streaming services.