Lame. I just bought a Fire TV this weekend (hasn’t arrived yet) because of all the Roku complaints. I wanted some streaming device and picked the Fire TV because it seemed least problematic reading this forum.
Android TV is virtually problem-free with Tablo since the last update.
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Just my experience, so YMMV, but Fire TV has worked very well with Tablo with the one exception being 720p/60fps broadcasts (which are almost entirely limited to sports broadcasts on a couple of channels).
If you’re not a sports fan, then I don’t think you’ll see any issues with your Fire TV and Tablo app. And the problem with Fire TV and 720p/60fps playback hasn’t really been explored by Tablo IMHO, so they may have a fix for this in the future.
I’ve configured mine to record using the highest available bitrate as well. I’ll add that I don’t think this is specific to 60fps source content - I even notice slight choppiness in playback of 30fps content as well, it’s just not as distracting there.
Changing from one codec to another doesn’t necessitate a change in video quality. If you’re changing frame rates during the transcoding process (e.g. from 24fps to 30fps) you’ll see judder which looks similar to the choppiness we’re reporting here, but Tablo should be preserving the source framerate when set to the highest recording bitrate.
And in terms of assessing video quality on a phone, you absolutely can discern choppy/smooth video playback. Your argument would hold if we were talking about picture quality / resolution, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Well, what I think the OP and myself are talking about is a pretty subtle effect that seems to be caused by the transcoding process behind the Tablo and the incoming signals.
I for myself have tested it on a Roku, and ATV 3 & 4 and since I also have my OTA signal coming straight to my TV I can always compare the 2 quite easily and unless my eyes are lying to me, I can guarantee you the image isnt as smooth on the Tablo input as oppose to the uncompressed signal coming from the Antenna and going straight to my TV Tuner.
As I said the difference is subtle so you wouldn’t see it on an iPhone screen, which is why I said that.
If there’s a chopiness issue currently affecting Amazon Fire TV it may be a different issue however, so sorry about this confusion.
Same here, we just watch it on TV directly from antennae input.
And Nexus Player was $50. And because it is Nexus you get Android the way Google made it and can update sooner. Mine is on Marshmallow. Also have Marshmallow tablet Nexus 9.
Android TV
And before. Never updated. If it ain’t broke,…
No, it didn’t resume from previous playback position and it had flashing black frames when scrolling through recordings before the newest update. It still played back just fine but it’s much more refined now.
A Nexus player wouldn’t really work for us as we have several things we have purchased that are part of our Amazon library. Not a big fan of multiple devices doing the same thing per TV.
It would be nice if Amazon and Google would stop being brats and allow each other’s apps on their streaming devices. Really moronic that they don’t.
The original posts mentions a “data closet”… what kind of cooling goes on in there? Tablo heat can be an issue impacting transcoded output.
Transcoding by itself is not necessarily an issue… the h.264 codec is very good with high speed motion but, depending upon what engine is being used, what the parameters given to the 264 libs for transcoding are, and various other things that go into creating a solid output stream ymmv.
The data closet is in my home office. The data closet itself is behind a normal closet where my file cabinets, etc…are When we built the house I ran CAT6 everywhere and it is all terminated back to the switch in there. That is also where the telecom panel and the panel for the alarm system are housed. The closet has its own cooling and is kept at a constant 68 degrees. The Tablo itself is even sitting on a dual fan high output laptop cooler just in case.
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Ok, here’s an update…
Last night we watched a couple of different basketball games and during them I was switching back and forth between the Amazon Fire TV and the Roku 3 in our theater room. Both are hard wired.
At first the the “herky jerky” motion was equally bad on both devices. Since the Roku was normally in our RV and had not been used in some time I decided to see if there was an update for it. Sure enough there was so I updated it. The software version on it is now 7.9, build 9044
After the update the “herky jerky” was not nearly as noticeable on the Roku as it is on the Fire TV. It is still there, but far less noticeable or distracting. As part of the test I even switched the HDMI cables between to two devices to make sure everything was being viewed under the same parameters. As of right now I can say that the Roku is better than the Fire TV when it comes to sports.
The Amazon TV does seem to have better sound quality and also less issues with audio/video sync. The Roku for whatever reason had more issues with audio/video sync.
Another thing I noticed after the Roku update is that the Live TV guide moves much faster than it did. It also doesn’t “freeze” after moving up or down 10 channels or so like the Fire TV tends to.
Very interesting. Amazing what updating your device will do. I would still like to see the issue corrected with the Fire TV as that is our main device on multiple TV’s.
I Airplay our Tablo to our AppleTV’s set to 1080p60 and it looks like any content (regardless of resolution or recording settings) is frame-converted from 30 to 24 fps. The effect is only noticeable during sports as most network TV is 24 fps. Over time, I’ve gotten used to it.
O-O-O-K-K-K then. Ever get partial pixels during fast motion?
No, I don’t see any visual artifacts of the transcoding process. Note that if you are seeing some, it could be the original signal from the broadcaster if they have multiple sub-channels which is taking away from overall available bit rate.
I’m curious. For the people that are seeing this, if you pull the recording off the tablo using something like Tablo Ripper and watch it on a computer, do you see the same effect?
This might help determine if it is a problem with how the file is encoded vs a playback issue.
Just wondering, for those with Roku - does this apply to interlaced video (1080i stations)?
I tried SlingTV for all of 5 minutes. It looks like they haven’t figured out how to properly convert interlaced into progressive so that, on a Roku at least, it would look a LOT nicer.
Same goes for Emby. When it encodes, it does a fine job. Problem is, on a Roku, the interlaced channels are very hard to watch. On some material, you might not notice a lot, but it’s there, and worse for sports and scrolling “tickers” on screens.
Anyway, I wonder how this device handles interlaced video. Is it transcoded? If so, for interlaced video (CBS in many areas, for example), is it re-encoded into a “progressive” form that a Roku would handle (and, I assume other devices)?
A theory I have after reading everything posted. Could it be that this is related to the device’s ability to playback 60FPS content? It could be that the Roku and the Amazon Fire TV are dropping frames while trying to playback the video. As someone else suggested, if @shiner could use Tablo Ripper to pull the original Tablo recording and view it on his PC, he could tell us if he sees the choppiness there. If not then we know it’s device specific.