Have to agree with most of the OP’s post. It is annoying the variance in experience across the various players with Tablo.
Google Nexus Player and FireTV (box) seem to have the best all-round experience with Tablo (functionality, GUI, stability). Annoying (to me) that they sort content oldest to newest forcing a lot of scrolling to get to latest show (non-subscription). (And super annoying that Nexus will interrupt anything to do a system update – not Tablo’s fault).
Google Nexus Player is amazingly FAST with Tablo … in every aspect.
Roku is disappointing because it feels crippled with Tablo (i.e., not having Settings or ability to access the Schedule). Not to mention the still present FF/Crash and now more frequent Pausing & Looping with 2.2.8 release. The one upside is content is sorted Newest to Oldest within a series (non-sub).
I just got the Nexus to check it out and it was so much better than my 4 Roku’s that it just left me disappointed that they are almost bookends by comparison.
Not bashing Tablo, it is showing more and more promise every single day, I just long for feature parity across advertised/supported streaming platforms.
Just received my Nexus player and installation went smooooooth. Although my Roku 2 worked, what I though was fine, this Nexus thing is amazing in comparison while using Tablo. And it is installed on the TV that is on the far end of the house 50 feet from the router that is on a different floor, running through a powerline wifi extender. After my wife is done watching her 4th Judge Judy I’ll start playing around with it more. But really, it is an absolute pleasure with Tablo as everyone else has been stating here. Well worth the $50 at Best Buy.
I was just about to post the same sentiment. My Roku 3(s) and Roku 4 are working pretty well currently with Tablo, but the Tablo app on the Nexus Player (received today as well) just absolutely blows the Roku’s performance out of the water.
I was also surprised by how much better the Tablo app is on the Nexus Player compared to the Fire TV (box and stick) - since they are both Android based and run the same, or very similar software for the Tablo app.
Have to say I’m really pleased with the performance of the Nexus player.
Tablo should make this their poster child for showing what their DVR can do…as it is SO much better than the Roku’s performance.
Update:
Having played with the Nexus Player some more, I can only say again how impressed I am at its performance. Netflix and Hulu apps also are much faster than my Rokus.
If this had Amazon Prime Instant Video, I’d be giving the Rokus away tomorrow.
Precisely. I suspect many users here have just accepted the fact that LPW’s, slow ff, and occasional crashes are just the normal thing with Tablo. They say “My Roku works fine most of the time.” or “I don’t have that many problems with my Roku.”
To those people I say, do yourself a favor and stop settling for a mediocre experience. Fork over your hard earned 50.00 for a Nexus Player and start REALLY enjoying your TAbloTV.
Good comment - I am so over the Roku/Tablo incompatibility and cannot understand It actually settled down and only occasionally re-booted itself with one or two LPWs during a 1 hour show. I then installed the latest Roku upgrade today thinking it might make all of these issues go away - big mistake. Back to being unwatchable. Once I have my coffee I will go through the thrash of rebooting all of devices in the Tablo chain. Bottom line, as I dwell in an Apple environment, I am used to my devices working pretty close to flawlessly out-of-the-box. IPad and ATV-3 provide a great Tablo experience. Getting more than impatient waiting for the native ATV-4 app. Almost pulled the trigger on Nvidia but decided to continue to wait for the ATV-4 app.
Just read another thread regarding the Roku upgrade and all of the Tablo issues being solved - that’s a head scratcher and just confirms the inconsistencies in performance based on network and configuration. A previous post used the term “mediocre” - a perfect definition of my Tablo/Roku experience. I love the Tablo concept and it works very well with legacy ATV-3 and the new ATV-4; albeit using AirPlay. So Tablo s/w engineers… get the ATV app out here and tell your marketing folks to get off the Roku bandwagon.
It’s funny, the other day I just saw a tweet from the Tablo team about Roku being on sale. I know it would alienate a lot of users but at this point, I’d stop supporting Roku. It’s not a feasible platform. There is too much Roku performance backlash on these threads and it’s not really Tablos fault, it’s the platform/hardware of Roku. Android Tv, Fire Tv, and tvOS are all great alternatives.
Roku still has a commanding share of the streaming box market. While I agree its unfortunate that development for Roku support has been met with mixed results, dropping support altogether would not only be bad for reputation, it would kill off a major portion of potential future customers.
Thats just a horrible business decision for a young product.
Clearly a lot of users who post have Tabl/Roku problems but many other users of the Roku platform do not. I do not - no LPW, no crashes on FF or rewinds - it just works. So not sure it makes sense to conclude that it is not a feasible platform based on a self-selected population of Roku users who have had problems. The CEO has characterized the issue as follows: “These symptoms are currently only affecting a small proportion of our customers.” Not sure any of us has any way of knowing whether that statement is accurate, but I sure wouldn’t be willing to bet the ranch based on postings of problems in the Community.
Based on what? The vocal minority here? Sorry but its pretty common that you generally only hear from the people that are having issues.
Only the Tablo employees know how large the roku tablo user group is. For all we know, it could just be a small percentage of roku users that are affected to the point of coming to the forums and complaining.
Yes, true. But I barely see complaints from a Nexus Player owner or a FireTV owner (not the stick). Again, I haven’t done a survey and I’m not a Tablo employee to know any specifics. I’m just going off the forum. When I first joined, it was fairly positive with just some troubleshooting. Lately though, I see more Roku issues, and more Roku issues. Just my observations.
I agree with @nicholb, maybe the problems will start “going away” as people switch to other devices.
I thought at one point, Tablo indicated that 80% of their user base were on Roku platforms? Not sure about that but if that were the case, I sure would expect to see a lot more Roku complaints than Nexus or FireTV complaints - maybe 10 times as many.
Exactly. The flaw in their argument that “only complainers post”, is that an Android TV, FireTV, or AppleTV owner is inherently no less likely to post complaints (or praise) than a Roku owner. That being said, the amount of complaint posts are disproportionately Roku owners, and the amount of praise posts are disproportionately owners of other platforms which work better.
That being said, I don’t think they should drop support for Roku completely, because as @Andrroid said, that may kill the product. Instead, I think they should make it clear that it won’t be ideal. Something that comes to my mind is compatibility charts on product software such as “Minimum Hardware Requirements/Recommended Hardware Requirements”. When people say it works perfectly on Roku, they generally mean with a lower bitrate and 5+ seconds of buffering before starting recordings and a few seconds to resume from commercials FF. Not ideal, but it works.
Would add to that the misguided observations that because most complaints inolve Rokus, it must be more troubled when based on the higher percentage of Tablo/Roku users over any other platform, one would expect more Roku complains. Also the fact that 23 people have posted that they changed from Roku to other platforms doesn’t really suggest to me that there is a stampede away from what is most popular platform for Tablo users. There are a lot of assumptions that seem to be made based on Community observations.
That can go both ways, you don’t have data that says most Roku owners with Tablo’s aren’t having issues.
Again, I don’t think people are making “sweeping statements” they are expressing frustrations with the experiences they are having with their Roku’s and noticing great performance with other devices (Nexus/Shield). The OP was frustrated and now has a Shield with less issues. Why wouldn’t we share this info?
I’m also not sure why you are being so defensive of the Roku platform, hardcore Roku fans? I think we are just on opposite sides of the fence here. Agree to disagree.
You have to admit, so far alternatives aren’t being presented as “alternatives to Roku” but are presented as “things that work” vs. Roku “which doesn’t, can’t and will never work”.
, the Roku issues hit a limit at home, needed to switch