Thanks for this common sense post! For three months we’ve had to listen to people who feel they’re stuck with problems for ever. They would rather bitch and complain ad infinitum rather than seek out cost effective alternatives. They remind me of people with tooth aches who would rather live with their pain (and make everyone around them miserable by constant groaning) rather than going to the dentist and PAYING (God forbid) to get the tooth fixed. Some people even became experts at telling the Nuvyyo corporation HOW things SHOULD get done according to their “deep” understanding of all things technical and managerial. But to do a simple thing such as change a little bitty ole device for the cost of what they will pay for a restaurant meal for one evening…
And now that a major problem has been fixed, these “experts” are now resorting to telling us HOW the problem SHOULD have been handled in the first place. It’s not enough to be happy that a major problem has been solved, they have to continue hammering away at The Issue one way or another with their “expertise in how things are to be rightly done.”
Some have just slunk away after coming in here loudly stomping their boots. Waiting for Scrooge to appear….
Yes but the primary focus here is about making the Tablo experience better. Fortunately for me I have zero interest in Amazon. Netflix rounds out my thirst for commerciàl free viewing and You Tube has lots of good stuff for free. Hoorah!
“A few very loud…” That’s what the french aristocracy babbled before heads began to roll. Ever consider that you might be the anomaly? Beware the irate masses.
I don’t think I agree with you here. I am firmly entrenched in Roku and have no plans of leaving the platform. I own most of the various streaming platforms and even with the occasional Roku warts it is the best streaming platform on the market. I also do not have problems with Tablo and Roku. It works well for me.
That brings up an interesting point. Why do you think your experience is better than many others? I’m genuinely curious as to why some folks just don’t seem to have the same problems that many others seem to.
I have seen cases where seemingly exact electronic hardware may actually come from two different manufacturing plants with different components entirely. This is often true in the hard drive industry.
There must be some logical explanation as to why the Roku/Tablo experience has been a nightmare for some, while others haven’t had any problems at all.
Well I have my theories on this and I don’t think it’s unique to Tablo but I think a lot of people buy this stuff without understanding the environment they are placing xyz device into and just expect it to work. Unfortunately we are not at a point where you can just plop a device onto a network and expect things to work. You have to make certain the environment you are placing the device in to is functioning properly. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to get things working properly and other times people are just lucky. I do know every time I have been over to a family members house complaining this or that technology isn’t working it only takes me ten or fifteen minutes to find the source of the problem. That is not saying there are not bugs or real problems in various devices but most of the time in my experience problems are mostly end user induced.
It figures that as soon as I buy the Nexus Player Roku goes and apparently fixes the underlying firmware problem that was killing our Tablo experience. That said, I figured I’d provide a five day update on the NP.
This thing is FAST compared to the Roku. The menus, FF resume and just about everything else fly.
The NP remote is a chintzy POS but since the NP also supports HDMI-CEC, I’ve just tossed it aside and am using my Samsung’s main remote instead.
The Tablo experience/interface is basically the same as on the Roku so I see no issue there.
Since the main apps I use are already available on the Samsung TV app menu (including Amazon), I’m really only using the NP for Tablo.
Having Google Cast is definitely an added bonus and works perfectly. The Showtime Anytime app is missing from NP so I just cast it from my iPhone.
Unless there is a compelling reason to go back to the Roku, I’ll continue using the NP in my main room and move the Roku 3 to another where it will replace a Roku 2.
Costing untold thousands of dollars and hours of end-users’ time… so they could watch TV without a hassle. Meanwhile Tablo actively marketed the Roku as the #1 solution despite grinding out release after release of firmware that fixed absolutely nothing. This speaks volumes.
I, for one, am happy the problem is solved (or appears to be), but there are a whole lot of unplugged Rokus tonight. I have 3 myself - that I bought specifically to work with the Tablo, specifically because of Tablo’s advertising.
Tablo screwed the pooch and should not be defended. They did the opposite of stating emphatically that the problem was with the Roku. Instead, they marketed it the Roku as the lead pony while punishing their user base with rapid-fire firmware updates that did more harm than good. Finally, their support staff blamed end-users for problems that had nothing to do with the end-user.
You can celebrate the fix, if you want. But defending Tablo is not only unnecessary, it’s in bad form.
The problem with this is that too many of the folks that expressed the problems here could speak to their environment and network configuration fluidly. There were a number of people (like me) that completely replaced every piece of their network, tried wired and wireless, followed every lead by doing silly things like using longer cables and questioning shielding, etc.
My hunch given the feedback I’ve read here is that most of the people that were NOT having problems were using 3 mb settings - for the most part, people were pretty vocal about it, meaning that those who were not, probably didn’t know one way or the other. Just a hunch. I personally never tried the low bandwidth settings because the year is 2015, and I’d sooner throw the thing in the garbage. There could also be something to the manufacturing tolerance / differences as well, who knows? That’s a can of worms I wouldn’t want to open since there will never be a way for us to even render an educated guess.
I don’t think anybody promised hassle free. Cord cutting is anything but hassle free. It’s money saving, it’s being able to pay for only the stuff you want but that trade off is putting up with some hassle and inconvenience.
That hassle is a product of two things: cordcutting as we are embracing it (heavy demand on streaming) is very new and subsequently, streaming comes with many variables. It wasn’t until I bought the shield TV and a new dedicated router and dedicated modem that I saw my woes disappear and I was able to enjoy my setup.
