The OTA DVR landscape Is changing, Nuyvvo needs to as well

Dear Nuyvvo:

I was an early adopter of Tablo and have had mine since they were first available to the public in April 2014. I’ve been fairly happy with it, and understood at the time that it was a new product with a lot of untapped potential.

I am impressed on how you have evolved the product so far in such a short timeframe. However, I think there are opportunities that are being missed by you that you should consider.

I’m willing to bet a large Timmie’s (Canadians will understand) that a large number of people that have adopted Tablo have similar characteristics: 1) they hate Telcos, and 2) have a large amount of technical acumen. I would also suggest that many are probably in the software industry from the looks of the responses in many of the forums.

We want this product to succeed. We enjoy seeing it evolve - it’s part of the fun, it’s not just about having a “working unit”. We enjoy the feeling of contribution. However, I am getting a little tired of seeing “it’s on our roadmap - stay tuned!” as a response to many of the same feature requests over and over again.

As a software professional (ok, I don’t code any more but I’m still in the profession) I believe the worst thing you can do is ask someone’s opinion (like in a survey) and not act upon it or give a realistic timeframe of when things are going to be delivered. I see the same requests now (mass delete, AC3 passthru, pull shows off of Tablo, migrate to another Tablo/hard drive, remote signon, etc.) that were asked for last year and we were told then (as we are now) to “stay tuned!”. I, like many others, am frustrated with this response.

Unfortunately for you, there is now competition in the OTA DVR space. Tivo Roamio is now offering $300 lifetime deals that are very compelling. And Silicondust HDHomerun DVR is just around the corner. XboxOne may also be a contender in this space soon with the release of their tuner. I know, they’re all “different” from what Tablo offers in many ways and some aren’t yet released but they all have one thing in common: OTA DVR with a nice program guide, and they just “work” - they’re not for just hobbyists anymore.

In order to stay ahead of the competition, I offer to you the following suggestions in the name of Customer Experience to help you differentiate yourselves from the rest of the pack:

  1. Ask the customer what they want (what a novel concept). Ok, You already did this via the survey, so consider this step done for now.

  2. Publish a roadmap of the features you’ve prioritized and are working on based upon your feedback in 1). At least that way we know you’ve listened to the survey results. Also publish target dates. We don’t need to know the exact date of release - just specify the quarter of the year you plan to do it by. “Second half of 2015” isn’t close enough, but “Q4 2015” is.

  3. Tap into the Tablo community deeper for help. I’m sure the software professionals here, short of writing code, would be thrilled to help define user requirements, beta test features on their myriad of devices, and generally do whatever is asked in the name of moving Tablo forward - for free! And have an official forum where customers can see the features as they mature in beta.

  4. Do whatever you can that is financially feasible to deliver what you’ve set out to do in 2). We all get that you’re a small startup and don’t have a lot of capital for developers, but doing these steps will at least help you prioritize the deployment of your resources.

  5. Go to step 1) and repeat. This is an ongoing process, not a “one-and-done”.

You do a lot of things right but lately I think the ball has been dropped more and more. And there are many other companies on the sidelines ready to jump on the ball and run with it. I think if we see more of the above you’ll get a lot of lifetime subscriptions in the next few months as most of us early adopters are coming “due”.

My last words - a quote from John Kembel, Stanford d.School. He says, “Most failures in industry are not that people can’t solve problems; it’s that they’re not always great at identifying the right problems to solve”.

That’s where customers, if engaged properly, can help you…

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For step two, while I agree it would be great, do you know how “dangerous” that can be with timelines?

a. If you miss a target Quarter because of a bug that is found, users will complain
b. If you meet the deadline but then it turns out it was buggy (maybe instead of focusing on the deadline, the focus should be on stability), users will complain.

I think a list of items would be great, maybe prioritized, maybe not, but definitely no dates. Prioritization could also piss off a niche group of users who are clamoring for one feature but it turns out is less of a priority to Tablo and the majority of users. I like the idea of a check list that shows progression.

For Step three, a beta would be great. It would give users the “stable” channel with less features but less buggy and then a “beta” channel that is less stable but offers more features. I’d love to see an official program though.

Overall, competition will drive innovation, the more companies in the space, the better for users.

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I agree with the original post. Deadlines are actually good because they create accountability. I’m actually a bit pissed off that a year down the road I still don’t have AC3 pass-thru, for instance.

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There have been endless great suggestions from Tablo users however the lack of progress on new features can only be attributed to one thing. Money. Without monies to hire software developers the result is exactly what we have. Tablo has a great concept but the pace of development may be its undoing as other products enter the market as referenced above. All of the comparisons and poking TiVo receives on this forum is laughable considering Tablo, which is now more than a year old, still can’t even delete more than 1 episode at a time.

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@Flatulator I am totally with you.

While I like the many options on where/when I can stream my recordings, the shortcomings are too great for me to deal with and not worth my time (time is money). I just purchased the TiVo OTA for $300 with lifetime subscription - the software is light years ahead.

I probably will continue to use my Tablo for streaming live sports while I am traveling. Tablo, I am still hoping for the best to come from you!

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I stayed with SAGETV, which was way, way ahead of Tablo in terms of user experience and utilities, but was PC based so I had a pair of two-tuner cards. I didn’t mind that at all, I just parked the server in the garage. But Google bought them and everything froze. As this group seems to mostly be, it was “supported” by a group of zealots / hackers and still is, but all of my extenders eventually died and not able to dig into the hardware to do open heart surgery. So it was the disappointment of an orphaned system. I have posted similar warnings to this one: the industry is marching on and Tablo will be overcome if they can’t find a source of investment to actually execute. I suspect many others are like myself: trying to figure out at what point I jump ship to a better solution before this one goes silent and I am stuck with hardware with a poor software package until the hardware dies. For sure my spouse is not pleased with the functionality I told her to expect a year ago and has not become fact. It would be great is a company with resources would just buy them out for the box design, but it might go just like SAGETV: buy 'em to kill an alternative solution.

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This is one of the most well thought through posts I have seen in a while. I think you brought up some great points.

Here’s the thing - I think it is clear based on the comments in this community that the “early adopter” type is the one who has really invested in Tablo thus far. That type of person loves to make tech product recommendations, and their friends usually trust them. At the same time, early adopters don’t want to make a bad recommendation to a trusted friend or family member, especially if the investment will be hundreds of dollars. Once Tablo matures to the point of not having features gaps, it will be a no-brainer recommendation. Until then, I agree that it is important for Tablo to continue to be transparent, but even more so than previously.

Right now I would love to recommend the Tablo to my mom and dad - he works out of town for months at a time. Tablo Connect should be the perfect solution. However, I have to reconnect on the same wifi almost weekly. I would be terribly embarrassed if they spent hundreds to set up access to Tablo remotely out of state, then have it break the link and render the whole setup almost useless. No, I’m not going to tell my mother to spend hours researching static IP assignment and hope that everything is configured perfectly.

I would love to recommend Tablo to my friends, but I know they would immediately notice the poor sound quality on their 5.1 surround sound setup and question my recommendation. No, I’m not going to tell my friend that having an AVR is unusual and that it’s not important to have good sound quality on a media device.

These are just a couple of examples, there are a few more usability quirks as well as mentioned on the community.

Here’s the thing - these feature gaps really wouldn’t bother me much, and wouldn’t affect my recommendation as long as I know that:
A) They are being worked on actively. Not being considered to be worked on at some point.
B) There is a somewhat specific time frame in which Tablo can be held accountable to implementing said features

That would allow me to tell anyone to wait a certain amount of time before investing in Tablo if it would not be an excellent product for them at this time. (until the feature is implemented)

If it turns out my needs don’t align with the majority of current and potential Tablo users, that’s okay, but I don’t want to be led to believe over a period of months and years that these features are being “worked on” but yielding no progress. As Tablo matures, I expect that the transparency will diminish, which is fine as the user base won’t be waiting on necessary features.

I still love my Tablo, and I want it to be the device I can recommend to anyone regardless of their situation.

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Some great points here.

I hope Tablo will listen to you to keep the product growing.

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I agree, money is a factor. I would argue that if you want to support Tablo and future development, I would sign up for the monthly or yearly subscription. The lifetime doesn’t provide consistent revenue. I think that is why TiVo can stay in business, they have a large enough base paying the annually/monthly rate.

I’m new to Tablo so I have not seen the rate of progression. From the posts I’ve read here it sounds like its been slow which is frustrating to hear.

That’s how I felt about Ceton. They promised android on their boxes that sold for $180 each. Months later they backtracked which was a massive disappointment. I sold all my hardware and went back to a cable box until recently with Tablo. I hope Tablo succeeds so I don’t have to repeat this scenario.

I read an article recently about Simple TV and how development started crawling to a halt. I really hope Tablo doesn’t become the next ceton or simple TV.

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@getcashmoney - well put my friend. I know Tablo and apologists are sick & tired of my whining about the “remote pairing” issue but your post describing your dads usage reinforces a simple theory those “in charge” may not completely understand about the situation and full ramifications.

I frequently get the response “it doesn’t affect that many users” sentiment. If you only count me, sure that would be an accurate assessment. However, this issue affected several people in my immediate household and as I mentioned in my FAIL thread, these people have become seriously disappointed and completely uninterested in Tablo. They now consider it “my weird hobby box” rather than the sweet little HDTV box it’s advertised to be.

Remember the old saying “you only get one chance to make a 1st impression”? My wife, daughter, mom & dad now have their 1st impression of “pairing FAIL” and keep asking me if good old TiVo has something like Tablo?

So yeah, it’s just me and a few others here trying to inform Nuyvvo of our predicament but for every person who’s saying “remote pairing” is a FAIL I hope they realize how quickly that can multiply 4-5 times for each household suffering due to the ridiculous remote access local pairing requirement.

Sure, things like the audio codec and multiple delete are important too but at least I can help “insulate” my household of users from those nags. I don’t like it but ‘can sit there and spend an hour deleting multiple episodes and can usually find an audio setup which works “good enough”. The occasional AppleTV hiccup, ok.

But this pairing thing? That’s 4 more people (formerly excited Tablo users) staring at me with egg on my face and left with a very poor impression of Tablo…

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I agree the landscape is much changed than one year ago when Tablo first released their products.

I hope they respond in kind. Only time will tell.

But when someone can actually find a device better than the Tablo at the same price point, I will switch. There are no legitimate options currently as of today. The TiVo $300 deal is dead. HDHomeRun is in the works. Xbox is only one tuner.

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I am watching the Silicon Dust solution pretty closely, because I have a huge NAS and a mature version of that might suit me very well. I’m pretty disappointed with how things have turned out with Tablo: remote pairing limitations, no AC3, no NAS support or export support. They keep making vague promises and then delivering tiny incremental improvements very, very slowly. I am starting to think they are grossly under-funded.

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@Scott_Curtis

The SD HDHomeRun coming out sounds great, but with no Roku or even iOS support at launch I would be hard pressed to switch from Tablo.

My front ends are 2 Roku 3s, iPad Air, and iPhone 6. And a Fire TV Stick which doesn’t get much use.

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As some of us celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, many of us are reminded of all the blessings in our lives which for which others have sacrificed to help make possible. For some, the holiday provides some perspective on any day-today suffering over the crippling frustration of lack of Dolby audio support, or the agony of Tablo Connect failure, or the rage over lack of mass deletion. Hoping everyone has a great weekend with family and loved ones.

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I am not expecting the Silicon Dust solution to be ready any time soon. I’m just watching how it evolves. They are a bigger and more established company than Nuyvvo, so they might have the fire power to mature their product faster. Who knows? If Tablo gets its act together before some of these other solutions surpass it, I’ll likely stick with Tablo.

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@getcashmoney - Thank you for completing my post! You nailed it. My intent in starting this thread was to consolidate our collective frustrations and hopefully make Nuyvvo aware of how we felt about the product, how we want to see it evolve so we can recommend it, and lastly but most importantly, keep it ahead of the pack in features and value as competition becomes available. I truly believe it’s not too late as long as they take action. What say you, Nuyvvo?

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Dear Tablo Community –

As the CEO of Nuvyyo, I very much appreciate the support you’ve all shown to our company and our product over the last year. We continue to remain committed to maintaining an open dialogue with you on feature requests and will provide as much insight as possible into upcoming features.

Unfortunately we cannot publish our roadmap with intended delivery dates for two main reasons: firstly, in order to maintain a competitive advantage and secondly so we can maintain the flexibility to change focus if and when priorities change.

This year we plan to continue to develop new features and address many existing feature requests while we also explore additional opportunities that could lead to expansion of our user base and revenue stream. In fact, several of the requests mentioned in this thread are being actively developed and will be ready this summer.

For example, in the next release we will be delivering the following features:
• Support for larger drives and fast formatting
• Bulk delete of episodes in a series
• Sort recording by most recent
• Smart sync (sync will occur in the background)

I realize that some features have been delayed for longer than both you and I would have liked. However six months ago we made a strategic decision based on customer feedback to focus on expanding our app ecosystem especially for ‘living room’ set-top-boxes. Given the intensive work required for this project we made the difficult decision to delay, but not dismiss the development of some features. Now that the majority of the work on these apps has been completed, we can again refocus on building these key features.

We are also planning to launch a program to provide access to a full REST API to interested 3rd party developers in Q3 of 2015. This will give talented members of the Tablo community a chance to develop add-ons and tools for use with Tablo like the Tablo Plex app.

I assure you that the team is pushing hard every day to make Tablo the best Over-the-Air DVR on the market and we’re doing everything within our power and current resources to provide you with the best end-user experience.

We have a lot of great updates in store for this year so I hope you can continue to remain patient as we develop and test these with the help of our beta team.

If you’d like to be added to the beta team and receive advanced access to new features, please contact support@tablotv.com and make a request to be added to the list. Please make sure to provide the MAC address of your Tablo unit(s) which is located on the bottom of the Tablo.

Thank you,

Grant Hall
CEO, Nuvyyo Inc.

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Thank you, Grant, for responding to this thread. I think many of us just wanted assurances that concerns were being heard and development hasn’t slowed down to a crawl. This next update sounds like it will solve some of the major issues of the Tablo.

I know I am looking forward to seeing what Tablo has planned next.

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Lack of AC3 support is one of the things holding back adoption among home theater enthusiasts. Those of us who were early adopters all had the expectation that surround sound would be implemented by the end of last year. It never happened and that has definitely been a topic of discussion around Tablo on AVS Forums, the Audio Annex and other forums. Nobody who has invested potentially $10,000 or more in home theater equipment wants a stereo-only television solution. Nobody. Lack of this extremely basic feature is deeply frustrating to the point where I no longer recommend Tablo to folks. This is not some obscure thing. This is the kind of very basic feature that most people would just assume works. Show me any other mainstream product or service that does not support at least DD 5.1. It is a glaring omission.

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