What features would make the 4th Gen the very best OTA DVR?

@dsperling and @metsmcsa - both good ideas. The Live TV Sync Source is something I’d never heard of or thought of and it makes sense. Would something like this provide better performance?

The web interface and signal strength meter ideas have been brought up in different ways in the past.

Thanks for bringing these up.

@wysiwyggin - Live TV Sync Source only improves navigation but not performance. @metsmcsa - I also like your suggestion.

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Equipment: Roku and Android mobile

Scenario: I’m in the guide and come across a program that looks interesting. I decide to watch it live then decide to record the program after watching for a while so I can finish watching watching it later. To do so requires that I exit to a prior level to start recording. Recording starts at the place where the episode is when I select Record Episode.

The ability to rewind a live program is made possible by recording the program as soon as I start watching it. It must stop recording once I back out to manually start recording. The portion that is recorded to that point is thrown away. I would like for the background recording to continue long enough for me to check for other showing times to select or for me to select Record Episode. Selecting Record Episode.should prepend the background recording to give a complete recording from the point where I started watching the program.

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Putting a start ratings filter on the movies guide like the 3rd Gen Tablo had.

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Eliminate fragmentation of recordings - where you record a 1 hour show, and get three recordings that add up to an hour.

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Absolutely MUST make the device useable when I have no internet.

There is no good reason to prevent me from watching live OTA or watching locally recorded content if I have local wifi, but no internet connection.

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Improve ways to search for content you want to watch.

Legacy tablos have an option in Movies to look at 5 star movies or 4 star movies, etc. That lets me eliminate movies I am very unlikely to want to see, and see at a glance what is coming up that I might actually want to record or watch.

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I just thought of this as I was getting ready for a plane trip…

I know that the Gen4 is not equipped to view outside the home, and I get it… with all the bandwidth that would be needed. However, how about an option to download for off-line viewing?

In preparation for my trip I went to some of my streaming services, like Netflix, and downloaded a couple of movies to watch on the plane. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do that with the phone app for Tablo? And, that would not be impacted by the bandwidth issues.

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A real time signal strength meter that shows the strength (& quality if possible) of the OTA channel currently being watched. This doesn’t even need to be available in all platforms at first. Just add it to the guide somewhere on the android tv version first (or whichever is easiest). Then it can be added to other platforms later if possible. Having it on only one platform initially would be fantastic.

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the ability to add my own m3u8 playlist

@Scott_Mccay … you might as well look into Channel DVR and the HDHR.

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the ability to browse the guide while the channel plays in background or small window

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thanks will look in to it

FWIW, @Scott_Mccay, I came from Channels DVR but the platform I used (Raspberry Pi4) is no longer being supported. It’s really good software that allows import of all kinds of media but it requires familiarity with Windows, Linux, dockers, etc. I used it to record OTA and I could handle the simplicity of the RPi4, but that’s where my expertise ends. Tablo is a whole different target audience, definitely more consumer-oriented. I’m very impressed with Tablo thus far and I’ll become their biggest cheerleader if things go well this weekend (Super Bowl).

I’m getting the best performance out of connecting it to an ethernet rather than Wi-Fi even though I have really good Wi-Fi and a really good router

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I was able to hardwire everything and luckily avoid a lot of those connectivity problems.

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I’m surprised nobody’s come up with an app that has a cloud DVR where you can load playlist it doesn’t sound complicated

You can certainly create a playlist using PlexDVR. Upload m3u8? Well, gets into pathing and such would is more suited for anonymous (non-secure) access style setup. Plex, “can be this” (has that feature), but it’s not the typical default.

i think i got a way to record my playlist without buying a separate device gona try tivimate on my shield

This shouldn’t be happening. If I’m not mistaken, the show fragmentation into parts is caused by signal dropping. Or maybe network. Maybe @TabloTV can chime in on this.