I agree. With this cost structure I will never buy a 2nd Tablo. I’m still pissed that they retroactively changed the terms and conditions for something that we already paid for as existing owners, which is not what I expected of a company like a Tablo; but hey, live and learn.
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The subscription should have been changed from YOU to HOUSEHOLD so it could be shared by devices on the same LAN.
Then, you wouldn’t have a problem with the user who bought a DUAL and realized they need more tuners and will upgrade by adding another DUAL in the same house (and add a little redundancy for live TV to boot). Now, they must upgrade from DUAL to QUAD or get hit with another sub fee.
So how many people are truly running multiple Tablos on the same LAN in one house? I think this was more about blocking the “Netflix Problem” of people sharing subscriptions with their friends and family.
With the restriction to device, you might need to start working on the Tablo OCTO.
No, nothing should have been changed. You paid for something, you get what you paid for.
For future owners? Sure, you can do whatever you want.
And I’ll say the same thing I said on FB:
What’s to stop Tablo from going in the future and saying “hey now guys, our new account system no longer allows us to tie the lifetime guide data per Tablo, now it’ll be tied to each Tuner! For existing owners too!”
“Those of you with 2 tuners will need to buy 1 more lifetime guide data. 4 Tunes? Yeah, that’ll be another 3 lifetime guide data”
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Nothing.
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I get the frustration, but it still fundamentally differs from TiVo for example, where the subscription is still for that specific device. They aren’t taking that part away in how Tablo differs, it’s just a single lifetime subscription now covers one concurrent device.
I know it will upset people who would soon have multiple Tablo devices but how big is that number to begin with? I know we talk about it a lot here but how many Tablo users are actually using more than 4 tuners? The specific scenario I can see where it’s a bit unfair is when someone is wanting to upgrade from 2 tuners to 4 and doesn’t want to just make the jump/monetary investment to 4 tuners in one unit, but add a 2nd unit for a total of 4 tuners.
Otherwise, I get it and agree with @MotobikeMan, they have to make money to survive and they are seemingly choosing the smallest number of affected users to make the change.
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Well if you use today as a guideline, then they would have actually said: 4 Tuners? We’ll give you 4 guides for that today. But if you buy more tuners in the future, you’ll need to buy subs for them.
I think they certainly could have given a grace period for existing users. Let’s say for 1 year if you buy more hardware, they will comp you the extra guide sub to bump up your concurrent guides to work with their new software model.
And the funny thing is they would see a sales boost from existing users who want to lock in another guide with hardware they didn’t need to buy.
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If that number is so small, Tablo should have avoided the bait and switch tactics and ate the cost.
If people were taking advantage of the system, then add the LAN based subscription model. There would still be backlash, but a LOT LESS than there is now. Because what they did is sell you something, then go “nah, that was stupid, it’s not cost effective anymore, let’s jack up the price retroactively”.
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Remember the whole “unlimited” cell phone plans? When the carriers thought “o this was a bad idea, let’s retroactively cap what people can use”. If I recall, they lost in court and the cap can only apply for future subscribers.
I’m sure no one will actually sue Tablo over $150 guide fee, but that doesn’t make it any less shady what they just did.
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Hey look, another lie.
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Maybe it isn’t so small, neither of us can really say, hence my wondering. And maybe as a result of some civil discussion here they offer a compromise. But just knee jerk reacting like you are without much in the way of facts isn’t contributing much positive to the conversation.
No, it’s small. From @TabloTV on Facebook
the overall number of Tablo users with multiple units is low
All the facts have been posted in the blog and on FB.
We debated it a lot internally, but if we wanted to start rolling out new paid services it just wasn’t possible with the current account structure.
This wasn’t an “o crap we made a mistake” moment. They clearly spelled out the fact that they’re changing what they already sold to existing owners, they even gave a nice animated GIF as an example of how it’ll affect existing owners.
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Fair point, I should have been more clear. The above is what I’m specifically talking about. That’s a knee jerk reaction to this change.
Just like this change, if they make a change that makes other platforms more attractive to folks for their specific situation, those folks will be lost as customers. That’s a natural result of any change. For my situation, Tablo is still the best solution.
The above was hyperbole, obviously. But the point is still valid.
In your analogy, they stopped developing a specific platform, they didn’t take something away you already paid for. Apples and oranges. A more accurate analogy would be “what if they took the Android app off the market and forced everyone to uninstall it”. I would expect similar backlash.
I guess that’s where we disagree. I never purchased with multiple units in mind. For the majority of their users they haven’t changed anything with their current situation. To your analogy, they aren’t forcing anyone to do anything, much less removing the entire functionality.
To me it’s no different than setting quotas on heavy mobile data users. Everyone shouldn’t have to shoulder the additional cost of a few.
Having said that, I still think as some others have mentioned, a grace period to allow people with an existing until to one time add a 2 or 4 tuner unit (I’m really thinking the 2 tuner to 4 tuner scenario because I would guess the 4 tuner to 6/8 tuner scenario is much less frequent) and have it grandfathered seems fair since there was really not real notice given for this change.
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“So how many people are truly running multiple Tablos on the same LAN in one house?”
I have 3 Tablos each on a separate antenna system. Two of them are aimed at Seattle because I have 2Edge reception over a hill (as defined by TVfool). My third Tablo is aimed to the north to receive Vancouver stations by LOS (line of sight) and a PBS station. Generally I don’t miss any scheduled records even in bad weather.
I may replace broken Tablos in the future, but I will never need a fourth Tablo.
“I think this was more about blocking the “Netflix Problem” of people sharing subscriptions with their friends and family.”
On Netflix I pay for 2 streams at a time and this is what I am legally entitled to.
I own 2 houses in Washington State and a family member will often be in one house while I am at the other house. There is nothing wrong or illegal with using the two steams simultaneously from two different IP addresses. Limiting you to one IP address is why I dropped PlayStation Vue and I told them that is why I was dropping them.
I save about $100 a month using Tablo and SlingTV, and yes setting up the antennas was a pain, but I would do it again.
I have three tablos all in the same house, same LAN, and same antenna. I also have a hdhomerun.
Anyone who thought that a small company like Nuvyyo could always only charge $150 dollars for a lifetime subscription covering multiple devices, new devices, and their replacements plus new features on all devices has been hitting the pipe too much.
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I already brought this example up a few posts up : What you’re missing here is that the cell providers were sued by the FTC when it came to retroactively changing the terms for existing customers. Can cell provides add quotas for future users? Absolutely. For current users? Nope, sorry.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2014/10/ftc-sues-att-limiting-unlimited-data
When I bought a lifetime subscription it was a Canadian purchase and Canadian product. Has the FTC become international?
Fair point, and I added some additional support for a one time “grace” period to my previous reply.
Quite honestly, I think all that really frustrated me with your replies was the whole hyperbole part. I don’t see how it adds any constructive input to this situation and why it was necessary for an already divisive change.