Whole home DVR?

General Discussion
1

Yes, I know, that is probably a registered trademark of DirecTV, but it does a good job of the function.

In another thread (I don’t remember which one) a question of caching came up and it prompted me to do an experiment. I started watching a local news program on channel 4 at 5:56 this morning. I kept it running and went into a different room, turned on that TV at 6:07 and selected the same channel. After a few minutes, I checked to see how far I could back up. Sure enough, I was able to back up to 5:56. About an hour later, I was watching the same news program/channel on a third TV and the same was true, I was able to back up to 5:56, the same time I had started it on the original TV. That first TV had been turned off (and the app exited), but the second TV was still running.

So, yes, the Tablo is smart enough to recognize that a different streaming device is trying to access a channel that is already being watched and connects it to the same tuner with full access to that tuner’s cache. The first two TVs were both on Roku. The third TV was an ONN streaming device, so it works across platforms.

I still cannot find a way to record from the cache, so if you are watching a program from the beginning and after ten minutes THEN decide to record it, I can find no way to do so and have the recording starting from the beginning, even though those first ten minutes are stored in the cache. This is true EVEN IF you leave the program running on one TV (so you don’t interrupt recording to the cache) and initiate the recording on another device. By the way, this is a feature I would really like!

I’m curious what others’ experience has been. Has anyone found a trick to recording a show in progress from the beginning?

2

I wished many times that I could start recording a program from the minute I started watching it. I was hesitant to put it on the todo list since support had their hands full. This is a good time to bring up the held back issues now that many issues have been cleared up.

3

I actually think I have seen it on a ‘feature request’ list somewhere. I agree they had their hands full with other higher priority items (especially with OS14). I hope they get to this and other feature in the near futures.

1 Like
4

It’s unlikely to ever happen. It didn’t happen in the 10 years of the legacy Tablo, and there is no mention of the devs working on it for the 4th gen.

5

I don’t think it’s some sort of “trademarked” feature. Plex DVR allows you to “record” (commit) while watching, for example.

6

I was only suggesting that the name was trademarked, but I couldn’t think of a better way to describe the behavior. I’m still disappointed that you cannot fully record a program you are already watching, but I am pleased that the running cache is available when you switch TVs.