There is no such thing as the perfect streaming device

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…

My Tablo on Roku was horrible since 2.2.2 and got worse with 2.2.6. But, since 2.2.8 my LPWs have almost completely disappeared, and FF and RW times are now faster and consistent. I even upped the resolution and bitrate to the highest.

I think a few more features, and performance improvements would make it near perfect. Take the 4 second FF/RW waits down to instant, and allow fast pause and toggle between 2 live shows to watch 2 at once, and perhaps PIP, and put preview panes into live TV and I would be happy.

How bout something Rokulike but not TOO Rokulike?

My assumption is that with the steep price cuts on the Nexus, that it’s going to be replaced anyway. The Shield should have some shelf life - because they’re marketing to gamers are are using the Tegra X1 - which will probably prolong the life of the platform. If the Shield creates a decent new revenue stream for nVidia, I assume they’ll upgrade the device eventually, but I don’t see them just bowing out.

Besides, in two years, there may be a ‘winner’ and we’ll all be using it. I bought a house full of XBox One’s based on MS’s promise that it would own the living room. While MS is slowly making things better, the XB1 sucks as a streaming device, IMHO, so I switched back to Roku… bought a bunch of them… and some ATV’s… then the new versions of each… and I still ended up with the Shield - and finally happy with the three that I have.

I think the battle is still on the content front - and that’s going to take a while. I figure Apple would have it licked by now.

The only thing I miss is Fox regional sports programs. I can’t get the Dallas stars and it pisses me off.

There will not be a defacto winner in this game, just the major and minor players. If you have to pick a defacto standard it probably goes to Roku. I just read that Roku and Apple TV have 87% of the market between them. I believe this is true. They are the only two boxes I own and the Apple TV rarely sees use.

@rontbeamer Based on what I have read from a number of sources, that statistic isn’t even close to true.

Here’s an article from a few days ago:

Summary: Google is in the lead with Chromecast at 35% and Android TV has 13% , followed by Apple at 20%, then Roku and FireTV at 16% each. Android TV is also the 2nd most popular smart TV OS sold so far behind Samsung (I suspect that market share will rise as 4k becomes cheaper and more partners of Google start putting Android TV on their smart TVs).

The streaming device market, in my opinion, will become relatively similar to the cell phone market. Google will convince most major OEMs to use Android TV as software to save money, apps will flood in, and all other players besides Apple and Google will be become small minorities. Google will have the largest market share, and Apple will keep most of the profits.

I also see Google keeping Chromecast around to combat the low end market, due to their recent stance that Android TV boxes shouldn’t cost less than $100 to ensure a premium experience.

Just harmless speculation on my part based on recent trends in the technology space :smile:

Also, @Adam I agree that the Xbox One is a disappointing streaming box. Even with the powerful hardware and tons of content, the UI/UX is terrible and its extremely slow.

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Most of the people I know either own a Roku or Apple TV. Next in line for people I know is FireTV (with frustration) and in a very very very distant last place, other Android (e.g. Nexus Player and friends). This number is sort of growing with Smart TVs, but even then I find most of my friends are sticking with the existing streamer choices.

My experience is that should be relatively close to market share in the broader sense. I’m not saying the info you provided is bogus, I’m just saying if it is true, I may just have to buy a lottery ticket, because I’m going to win.

The difference between Chromecast and NP is $15. That’s a no brainer.

Or - Roku sucks for most people on Tablo.

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I don’t think that’s a true statement at all. I imagine overall there are very few people with Roku that have the nightmares that some people seem to have with them. I own 3 x Roku 3 and one Roku XD and they all work really well with Tablo.

I better statement is we have a few very loud and vocal people on the forums that are having difficulties with their Rokus and Tablo. That statement I do agree with and I sympathize.

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