After several hours of testing and wasting time, here are my reviews.
On my iPad and iPhone: The Tablo Legacy app and the Tablo app work very well with our Original Tablo 4-Tuner. Both apps are installed. We can switch between them: they can coexist on the same device without any issues. You might say that coexistence isn’t really necessary! In short, it works. The new app is a nice UI refresh for our old Tablo device (a good 12 years of loyal service). No slowness issues—I’d even say it’s faster with the new app.
HOWEVER, I can’t say the same about my experience with the same apps on our two Apple TVs, which are connected to their own TVs. That’s where things go wrong!
We use Tablo much more on the Apple TV than on our iPad. At first glance, the UI is a nice change, but you quickly notice how slow it is to start up. There’s nothing I can do—I’ve tried everything (using Ethernet cable and using WiFi, clearing the cache, reinstalling, and following every piece of advice I’ve received). I almost asked my State Power Company (Hydro-Quebec) to shutdown the province… that tells you everything!
The SLOWNESS remains an IRRITATION: a 30- to 35-second wait for startup, with the message “Getting free shows and movies…” displayed. I’m not quite sure what it’s looking for, but if it’s something other than a standard OTA update, it won’t be able to find it if it’s only available in the U.S. Afterward, you notice some odd behaviors—sometimes rapid flashing as if it were trying to update information, scanning channels, and ultimately failing to update the selected channels. The software seems to have lost its way. I finally managed to save my channel selection so that I could actually access what I had chosen. I had to try more than once.
Given these annoyances, I was desperately trying to use the Tablo Legacy app, which definitely can’t be installed on a device that has the new Tablo app. It says the device hasn’t been paired for a while, even though I can access it through either app on an iPad. We try pairing again—sometimes it doesn’t see the device on the network, sometimes it sees it but can’t connect. But from the iPad, everything works perfectly! In short, I can’t go back to using Tablo Legacy. Deleting and reinstalling the app didn’t change anything.
After lighting a lantern at St. Joseph’s Oratory and hanging my rosary on the clothesline while reciting prayers , one last try late in the evening, and I manage to reinstall both apps, launch them, and eventually one or the other recognizes our device. Eureka! It took barely a few minutes. I launch one, close it, launch the other, only to end up with the same problem: it no longer sees the device. Honestly, if God exists, he must be mad at me! So there’s a conflict between the two apps running on the same device. But on my iPad, both apps work perfectly fine.
I deleted everything (which clears the cache), forced a restart of the Apple TV, and finally got the Tablo Legacy app working—all without installing the other one.
In short, the latest Tablo update combined with the latest Apple TV update is causing a lot of problems. I’m not about to try that again anytime soon!