Will You Subscribe to Commercial Skip?

General Discussion
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I won’t subscribe as the service currently stands. I bought into the Tablo universe because I was sick and tired of being twenty-dollars’ed to death by subscription fees. And now, after that significant investment, and after suffering with a marginal commercial skip feature that was conspicuously missing from the very start, you now seek to ruin the most important thing that you have going for you: Cord-cutting. It’s more than a word, it’s a philosophy for people who are sick of subscription fees. That’s why I bought the lifetime guide - to finally be done with subscription fees. Personally, I feel betrayed.

And then to the point that others have made - it doesn’t work very well. People who seem to be praising the service say it works half the time. What?

And then to the mentality - you want to make it a web service, but I want less dependence on connected services, not more. I want login without an internet connection. I want Tablo to function as a stand-alone device, not as (yet another) internet-connected device. If civilization as we know if ends tomorrow, I want to be able to watch my terabytes of Tablo recordings while pedaling my generator. Or maybe maybe it will just be a big hurricane. Either way, less dependency on the cloud and all subscription based services seems like a good thing to me.

If you guys had chosen to process the recordings on the local Tablo device, instead of in the cloud, that might have made it slower, but at least it would have been free. It certainly would have been more private. What can I say? I think you guys have lost your way. I’m really disappointed.

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Their device has always relied on internet for basic operation. You have to pay for internet access to watch your free OTA recordings from your tablo. You’ve always paid, even if indirectly… and certainly some data gathering (cost of privacy).

It’s not really as new as you’d like to think… self-justification.

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I’d be curious if it was actually a choice or if there were hardware and/or software limitations that forced the direction forward.

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Good find. @MrMark It sounds like implementing it on device wasn’t an option. I was figuring if it had really been a practical option (like FF thumbnails are) they WOULD have tried it.

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Here is my perspective. An oft requested feature in the surveys was commercial skip. The Tablo device itself doesn’t have that capability, but the developers worked hard and came up with a solution despite that limitation. That solution does require extra server resources that was not originally budgeted for the Tablo, so a small annual fee will be charged (after months of free use).

So instead of saying that “you guys have lost your way”, you should be saying “thank you for going out of your way to please your customers”.

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and\or, since processing does not happen locally - it’s like paying for processor time (olden times). You don’t pay for more processing than you device really needs. If you want some extra, and can afford $20yr here’s an option.

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If you’re willing to put up with yet another ongoing bill after investing ~$500(?) to rid yourself of same, I find that to be a rather generous perspective. From my perspective, when a company advertises that “Tablo is a DVR for cord cutters.”, and then subsequently requires a cord in order to function, I believe that strongly supports my “you guys have lost your way” comment.

As to the local hardware being inadequate, I don’t believe that’s true. Slow, perhaps, but how slow are we talking about? I come from a SageTV background where the commercial skip processing was done locally, so I know from experience that the processing requirements were insignificant to a Core 2 Quad PC. Not exactly powerful hardware even at the time. I could record from six tuners and watch two, all simultaneously, and run ComSkip in near real time, all with a processor load of around 10 percent. If Tablo’s hardware is half as fast as an old Core 2 Quad, then it can do the same thing with a 20 percent load. Or take twice as long. Either of which would be fine with me. If ComSkip processing lagged 24 hours, that wouldn’t be bad. Even if it lagged a week, that would still have some utility. I think I would be fine with anything that doesn’t violate the original premise.

I am well aware that cloud computing is all the rage these days, but cable TV is arguably even more pervasive. We seek to distance ourselves from one, but not the other? In my mind, the insidious enemy is ever-increasing dependency on subscription services.

Ted Koppel’s book, “Lights Out” predicts a world where people will die by the millions when the power grid goes down. There was a time, not so long ago, when it would have been an inconvenience, not an apocalypse. And a time not so long before that when there was no power grid, so it wasn’t even subject for conversation. Now, snap back to the present and we can’t even watch broadcast TV without an internet connection.

Listen, I am a great fan of technology and gadgetry. I was an early adopter of both audio and video recording. I had reel-to-reel recorders for both audio and video long before cassette or DVRs. I had HDTV when the only content was a demonstration loop. I had a way to record it before SageTV pr Tablo. I think it’s fair to say that I’m an early adopter. I’ve spent a fair amount of time out on the bleeding edge. I’m not certainly not a technophobe.

But even with my love for technology I just can’t justify putting stuff in the cloud that can be better served by local resources. Why would anyone want to listen to radio on their cell phone instead of using an actual radio? I mean it works, but why not cut out the middle men? Can any form of electronic media be more “local” than the actual local broadcasts of radio and TV? I wonder how many people realize that Wi-Fi and cellular protocols depend upon RF (Radio Frequency) transmissions? Sure, you can receive a radio station feed and then stuff it up into the cloud to then be distributed to cellular networks and eventually mobile devices, but is that “better” than just turning on a radio? Maybe, but not always. I believe that there will always be intrinsic value in the elegance of local resource utilization. I believe that there will always be power in independence and self-reliance.

And that is my very long explanation of the thought process that justified my buy-in to Tablo. Now, that justification is being invalidated. I don’t know about all you guys, but if it came right down to it, I’d rather throw money at long-life hardware than to throw it at cloud services that have no lasting value. You guys can support this departure from the original concept if it suits you, but that certainly won’t send the message that would inspire Nuvyyo to stay their course. I won’t dive into all of the promises that were made explicitly, let alone the ones that were made implicitly, but I’ll just say that I bought in because I accepted, in good faith, that Nuvyyo would continue to support the Tablo universe that I was buying into, but that’s not what actually happened.

With all of that said, Nuvyyo has made some course corrections in the past, so I can only hope that they will do so again.

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I know. Internet authentication has always presented some challenges with my multi-WAN network. I had hoped they would eventually come around to letting the Tablo device handle authentication, but obviously this tenancy runs deeper than I realized. They could appeal to those who value privacy, if they wanted to, but apparently they have other more powerful motivations.

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Everything in engineering design comes down to a choice of compromises. I’d like to see the data.

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Probably trade secret.

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Transparency certainly can be inconvenient.

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And embarrassing.

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ask Trump

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There is not clearly defined term “cord cutter”. Here’s an article exemplifying some differences. There are probably others with different ways to define it.

It may be you don’t fit tablo’s demographic cord cutter. You trying to fit into a market which doesn’t suit your needs… and insisting they conform to your standards? :angry:

You don’t have to, it’s not a belief. If you think the manufactured one way… and they claim it works another - again, you may have to wrong device. You ought to have something you trust with some certainty.

Misunderstanding, your TV works - as a TV. Why listen to the radio on a phone? why watch live TV on your tablo? If you have an actual TV? You’ll need the internet to watch your recorded shows from your tablo.

That’s subjective… for someone sitting at home, sure. But not everyone has local resources which can be better used that cloud services – it’s not all about what’s best for a minority demographic.

There are limitations to RF. Of course distance. Some buildings, you can get connect to wifi and listen to a radio station than you can get with a… oh, you want to carry a radio along as well? Or are you still just sitting at home… minority demographic.

Several times last year Nuvyyo “sold out” of the new Quad model. Not sure how many thousands are in a shipment… but apparently they have thousands if not 10s or eve 100s of thousands of new new customers… 12493 users registers with Tablo Community (unclear how many are active), I suspect is only a fraction of registered devices. How many of the 12493 are feeling “mistreated”? that they will “come around” :laughing: If you feel gouged with an annual billing… for new services -still getting all the support they said you’d get- how much do they have to keep giving away for how many years?

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I completely disagree. They have not changed in any way. Commercial skip is just an optional add on, just like Cloud DVR, neither of which is necessary for operation. If you want it, pay for it. If you don’t, your Tablo functions just like it did for the last 6 years.

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I’m all three types mentioned in the article you linked, so that would seem to make me highly qualified to know what a “cord cutter” wants. Or at the very least to know what a cord-cutter like me wants. If you don’t want the same things that I want, that’s fine…nobody has any authority to tell another person what he/she wants.

But I do have to ask, do you work for Nuvyyo? I ask because you made several statements as if you knew them to be facts, and unless you have insider information, you cannot know to be true.

As for minority demographics, that would be cord-cutters. Cable TV is the mainstream. But we’re not talking about mainstream in this forum, are we?

As for places that RF can’t go, granted. But then it is also true that broadcast radio CAN go most places, so the application for a way to listen to the radio where radio doesn’t go would have to be the exception rather than the rule. I think it’s fair to say too that there are a lot more places in the world where cell service doesn’t work, but radio does. This is a silly conversation - nobody has to listen to the radio if they don’t want to. Or watch broadcast TV for that matter. Anyone who is so-inclined can watch TV via cable and listen to the radio via cell phone. All I did was to respond to the survey question.

I don’t care how many forum members feel “mistreated”. I only care that Nuvyyo knows that I do. What they choose to do with that information is entirely up to them. Just as what I choose to do as a result of their actions or innacations is entirely up to me.
I invite anyone who is interested to do a little thought experiment.

Imagine that Nuvyyo came up with a “good” reason to dishonor your lifetime subscription - would you be okay with that? How about if, along with that, they “justified” that going forward, all subscritions would be monthly at a rate of $20 per month - would you still be on board? What if they made it $200 per month? Heck, I know a lot of people who pay that much for cable TV, so Nuvyyo might actually make a case for it. What if they said $2000 per month? At this point, at least most people must be thinking, “There’s no way that I would pay $2k per month for broadcast TV!”

And so I submit to you that it’s all relative. Some might stick around for more after their lifetime sub was dishonored. It would be wrong, but, “hey, it’s still cheaper than cable”. True enough. I’m guessing that a much smaller number would stick around after a 10-x rate hike. And after a 100x rate hike, only fools would remain. And granted, that’s judgemental on my part, but I believe that a lot of people would agree.

So see, it would be wrong to dishonor the lifetime agreement, but there would be those who would allow it, and possibly even support it. In my mind, this is little different than dishonoring the spoken/unspoken agreement that commercial skip would eventually be included. Certainly that promise figured strongly for me. We could wear out the forum debating what a “promise” is, but FWIW, I took it for granted that, as a founding member, I would eventually be entitled to that functionality. It was so glaringly missing that I never imagined that Nuvyyo wouldn’t fix it.

What happened instead was that Nuvyyo pushed as hard as they dared and is now observing the response. If they don’t get much push-back, why not push harder? [Eyes gleaming] maybe they really COULD get away with $200 per month rate! Even if they lost 80 percent of their customers, they’d still be dollars ahead - that’s fantastic, right? I say no. A thing is either ethical and honorable or it is not. Nuvyyo will probably get away with breaking my trust, (one time) but that will never make it right.

I’ve said what I believe needed to be said. I won’t defend it further, but anyone who is interested might check back after a while and see if my posts have been “moderated” out of existence. That in itself will say something. Either way, perhaps it will register in some way with Nuvyyo and others who matter.

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I am a cord cutter that subscribes to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Crunchyroll, Funimation, and (for now) DC Universe. Cord cutting has allowed me to focus on only paying for what I want to watch, and subscriptions are the way to do it.

My Tablo represents maybe 1% of what I watch, but it is still useful for the few shows I record now. And because of this forum community and the great interactions I have had with the Tablo folks, I love to help answer questions and defend this product.

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I was more upset when Nuvyyo got rid of the one subscription per household (allowing you to add Tablo devices) policy. IMHO, it was a market differentiator. They grandfathered old timers in, but to me, it was one of the most appealing things about getting a Tablo vs. the competition.

Their cloud commercial skipping service (I may have come up with the idea first though), is a nice add on for those that want it. But it has its warts. Unlike the aforementioned policy, I believed Nuvyyo was pretty upfront about it’s “free while in beta” status.

My two cents.

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…so, for some. cord cutting has some wires, although you insist it shouldn’t?

I read the forums and use the bookmark tool and Knowledge Base articles and other information out there. They aren’t as secretive as some make then out to be.

With in tablo users, it appears to be lifetime subscribers, who felt they had a membership along with an elite status. I referenced how many members registered in the Tablo Community forum, it’s readily available. Haven’t counted how many “demanded” free commercial skip - but it’s clearly a minority. It’s a reasonable guess compared to how many sales, the ratio of devices and Community members… still a minority.

It read more like you were comparing old tech to new tech and why you didn’t want anything to do with could computing… there was no survey.

For one, “lifetime” isn’t defined, so I didn’t opt for that, mine or the programs. I didn’t want to get into a forever contract that invaded my privacy, now or in the future if modified drastically, so I stayed away. Never so it as a membership either.

But cable corps provide at least some type of content for that price. Just for a guide subscription and the features that go along with it? I can set manual recordings.

Again great misunderstanding!!! You don’t have to pay Nuvyyo anything at all to use their device for broadcast TV! You do, how ever, have to pay someone to have access to the internet to properly use it, but Nuvyyo isn’t an ISP, so you can’t pay them for that.

WHERE DO YOU GET THIS??

You paid for Guide Data! and some advanced recording features! What part of data subscription is dishonored? Even if you do believe that, it’s impossible -

  1. Changes to these Terms . Nuvyyo reserves the right to update or modify these Terms from time to time.

:stuck_out_tongue:

YUP, I started out trying to share some understanding. Then it was kind of enterting cause I was a bit bored. Now, it’s mostly run it’s course…