There is no such thing as the perfect streaming device

My devices:
Roku 3 Wireless
Roku 4 Ethernet
FireTV Stick Wireless
Asus Nexus Player Wireless

I have the Nvidia Shield being delivered today.

Let’s face it, TabloTV absolutely SUCKS on the Roku. It was most tolerable for me on the beta just before the 2.2.8 update. It loads slow, it crashes, LPW’s like crazy. Always has and looks like it always will. At least for the foreseeable future. Other than the Tablo app the Roku is great. Rock solid and plays everything I throw at it.

The fireTV stick plays the Tablo app ok. It’s slow but tolerable, doesn’t crash and LPW. The problem is that it’s slow and cumbersome as a media player. It has to buffer quite a bit with Netflix and Amazon.

My nexus player plays Tablo flawlessly. It’s quick, never crashes, ff and rw works well and load quickly. All other apps also work great. The problem is no Amazon Prime app.

I expect the Nvidia Shield to be my favorite device based on everything I have read about it, both here on the forums and elsewhere on the web. But again, no app for Amazon Prime. This is Amazons fault, not Nvidias.

So for now the plan is keep the Shield and the Roku 4 attached to my main TV. I’ll have to switch over to the Roku when I want to watch something on prime. I’ll use the Nexus in the bedroom where I only watch recorded TV on the Tablo.

As a side note, the recorded shows we watch always seem to be true crime shows like snapped. Mostly about women murdering men. My wife loves them. I don’t mind her watching these shows, but I have to admit it bothers me somewhat when I catch her taking notes. :smile:

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Do you have a life insurance policy she has an eye on? That’s the first question Perry Mason always asked in these cases.

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I don’t find Tablo sucks on Roku at all. Could it be better? Sure, but it definitely does not suck.

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Report back what you think of the Shield when it comes! I agree with your strategy of keeping a secondary device for Amazon Prime if necessary. I keep my Smart TV hooked up to my receiver just in case I want to use Amazon Video, though I haven’t used it more than initial setup.

My bet is the Shield is the best and the Fire TV is a close second (not stick - those things just lack the processing power to shine). The Apple TV will probably end up out performing the Fire TV. Personally, I keep a fire stick in the TV for those rare times I need to use Amazon Prime.

Unfortunately the nature of the Roku’s proprietary software platform is apparently a major hindrance to development. The CEO of Nuvyyo explained it in a recent interview; they basically had to build a layer of software on top of the roku to get the Tablo channel to work.

I certainly will.

yeah, I’m not laying blame on tablo or roku. just stating my experience with both.

I think you meant: “Let’s face it. TabloTV absolutely SUCKS for some people on the Roku.” It works just fine for others.

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I read the forums here every day. If I were to amend my statement it would be “Let’s face it. TabloTV absolutely SUCKS for most people on the Roku.”

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Are you assuming that everyone with a Roku that works just fine posts in this Community? Might there be Roku users out there whose Tablo experience is fine who either don’t post or don’t even belong to the Community? Don’t you think that people that post are somewhat self-selected?

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At the top of the Forum Page click on the magnifying glass. Type in Roku. Start reading through the posts.

I didn’t intend for this thread to be a bash on a certain device or app. I love my TabloTV, I love my Roku. Unfortunately they don’t seem to play well together.

I was stating the devices I own and what’s good and bad about them for me. I WANT the Tablo app to work on my Roku, but the reality is that it does not. The amount of forum posts on the subject backs up my claim. If we had a rating system here of how well TabloTV does with the Roku I’m fairly certain it would be 3 stars max.

I’m not sure where the fault lays and at this point it doesn’t matter, I’ve switched devices. TabloTV works great on the nexus player for. Unfortunately the nexus player lacks other things I use such as Amazon.

Hence the title of this post.

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And that’s why when I recommended a Tablo for my next door neighbor’s home theater - to stream OTA to his basement - I didn’t dare suggest a Roku for the player (wasn’t about to risk HIS money). I had read enough about the Roku at this forum. Instead I proposed he get a Nexus player. Has worked great in his environment for two months now.

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I don’t really have problems with my Rokus (4x3 and one XD). I’ll admit I do get the occasional LPW and with the new “fancy” i/f (just like Netflix, which has the same problem)… occasionally the Roku has to reboot due to crash (not everyday and not even every week). Note the Netflix on the old XD is the old brightscript style one, fairly uniform but perhaps not terribly “pretty”… Netflix knew that their new i/f was too much for the older generation Rokus.

With that said, I do wish the war between Google and Amazon would end, or get better, and I do wish that vendors (e.g. Nvidia) would pay to get the Amazon Prime app (like Sony did). But we’ll see…

I’m not sure if I would have even said that last paragraph had the Roku 4 not been such a disappointment. I like the agnostic feel and ubiquity of the Roku… IMHO, Google still tends to “burn” people… will be interesting to see how people react then the Nexus Player and/or Shield are dropped like a hot potato… but you know maybe that won’t happen for 2 years or so… and maybe people will have no problem moving (ultimately by force) to AndroidNext by then.

I don’t understand all the Roku complaints at all. I find it to be pretty darn stable. It can be a finicky when updating the guide or trying to watch live tv while the other tuner is recording, and a very rare lockup on Roku but other than those things it’s pretty solid. Recording playback is instant. It records all the shows I want. I worked out my 10Mbps streaming issue and it now streams to all my Rokus at 10Mbps without issue, even the old ones. Streaming live broadcasts could be a bit quicker but any app that has to buffer and transcode is slow on Roku too, just the nature of the beast. Overall Tablo works well and Roku covers pretty much all the streaming bases. Done and done.

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For the $37 investment I have in the Nexus Play, it won’t be that big of deal. Streaming devices are very much a fast developing market and I’ve been through many. I’m sure there will be a hot new device in a year or two that I can’t live without. Till then, the Nexus play fits 90% of what I need and the Roku 3 handles the rest.

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Precisely why I added:

We tend to live on about 2 year cycles or less for tech. Perhaps influenced by cell phone contracts??

(but where is the next “good” Roku? A dilemma.)

Right now nobody is poised to replace Roku. They were first to market and have remained agnostic while everybody else is busy having turf wars. And while not the fastest devices around these days, in general when properly setup they just kind of work. Every other device just has some kind of major deficit that causes it to end up collecting dust in my house. Most important is that the thing just works and second and almost as important is that anything I want to stream is on the platform.

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This is why I am worried about Roku. They haven’t really done anything new for the platforn in a few years. That’s a death sentence for a tech company - look at Blackberry. The performance is still much slower than any competing platform, and the development tools and UI design language are lacking as well. They aren’t going anywhere this year, but I can’t see them standing up to the largest tech companies in the world long-term.

I think they have been distracted with the whole smart tv thing. They need to focus on STBs. The R4 came out but kind of fell flat. It was like a half hearted attempt at 4k and an update. One of those things that make you go hmm…

I still think we need something Roku-like, something that works with all streaming services, etc… Time will tell…