Why can't I rewind a live show to the beginning?

I’ve had an original Tablo device for years. It recently lost its ability to tune in channels so I ordered a new one. The new one is much more difficult to use, too many screens and all, but it does do a much better job of tuning in. One big problem is that I cannot rewind any “live” shows to the beginning. What is up with that? My legacy Tablo had no problem doing that. also, on many recordings the picture freezes yet the audio continues to play. I have boxed my new Tablo up and I’m ready to send it back. How was such a perfect product ruined?

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What streaming device are you trying to do this on? AppleTv and mobile apps do not support this feature (no native MPEG2 support, so uses 3rd party programming), but I think all the other apps support it.

Hello!

I’m trying to watch on my iPhone, using the Tablo App. The older version of the app with my legacy Tablo let me do this.

The legacy Tablo used transcoding to take a native stream and convert it to a MPEG4 file type that can be read by pretty much everything.

The 4th gen Tablo uses the native MPEG2 stream. Mobile devices and the AppleTv can’t handle that stream natively (which is why there was no mobile or AppleTv support for the HDMI Tablo), but the Tablo engineers used some 3rd party methods to make most of the functionality work. But one of the major compromises is that rewinding a live stream (whether recording or not) is not possible on those devices.

You will need need a Roku, FireTv, or AndroidTv if you want that functionality (and I think the native Samsung and LG apps support it as well).;

I can confirm the native LG Tablo app does indeed let you rewind live recordings. It’s certainly not as fast as the AppleTV Tablo app, but at least it fills the void.

I’m also a disappointed AppleTV Gen4 Tablo user. I understand the reason why live recording rewind doesn’t currently work, but I wonder if it would be possible if Tablo developers made the effort. Or, is this a baked-in hardware limitation of the Gen4 Tablo?

This article covers the subject: Can I Watch Live TV and Recorded Programs Outside My Home? – Tablo

However, it is not possible to view in-progress recordings from the beginning of the program via Tablo apps on Apple TV, iOS and Android mobile devices.

This is because these apps do not use the device’s built-in player software as Apple products and many Android smartphones and tablets do not support the playback of MPEG-2 video natively. For this reason, specialized player software is required.

This player software is not able to differentiate between live streams and in-progress recordings as they both do not have specific start and end points. Therefore, playback of in-progress recordings can’t be started from the beginning of the program on those devices.

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Thank you for the reply, however your canned response doesn’t really answer the question.

Is the hardware capable of live rewind?

Are Tablo developers capable of delivering this feature?

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This isn’t a hardware/firmware issue. Most Tablo clients support this feature.

As for the second question, the answer really doesn’t matter. It would require some company to create tools that allow mobile phones and AppleTv to handle MPEG2 data even better than the ones the devs used, and that likely would require complete rewrites to the Tablo apps on those devices. The time, effort, and cost very likely are the blockers.

In other words, don’t hold your breath.

Oh well…