Working Plex Tablo Channel with FW 2.2.22

I have a Vizio TV with integrated Chromecast (that Vizio calls SmartCast). I have the exact same problem as described in the following thread: Tablo for Android can't stop/restart/control Chromecast streams. The only difference is that I still have the problem even with up to date Tablo App and firmware. I opened a support ticket and was told that SmartCast was not supported. I expected a better answer from @TabloTV who states that its product is working with Chromecast. Like I said, SmartCast is the same as Chromecast. It’s just a name given by Vizio to their Chromecast enabled TV.

Since my Vizio TV comes with the Plex client I decided to try to install the Tablo Channel (version 0.992 originally coded by @Davidvr and @PiX64 ) on a Plex Media Server. Recordings were not showing up but the Live TV was working fine. I’m not a developper but I’ve done a lot of scripting in differents languages over the years so I decided to try to get the recordings working. I’ve done some network captures while accessing the Tablo web interface. I managed to get enough information to adapt the init.py and ServiceCode.pys to make it work. The only limitations so far are the sports/events that are not showing up as I don’t have channels that broadcast this kind of program and the background art and thumbnails that are not showing up (I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that the image file on the Tablo don’t have a file extension).

Now that I have a working Tablo Channel on Plex Media Server, I’m wondering how to have changes I’ve made to the plugin locally merged to the « master » code on GitHub. Like I said, I’m not a developper so I have only basic notions of branch and fork. Can anyone help me so that other user benefit from my modifications?

How sure are you of this fact? Usually there are limitations or differences when Google’s software is adapted to work directly on a TV.

Also Plugins for Plex Media Server are dead, while you can still manually install them they will likely remove support for all plugins from their software. See link below.

The fact that I can manage my Vizio TV the same way as I do for my nVidia Shield TV in the Google Home app makes me believe that it’s pretty much the same.

I am able to cast videos using Tablo app. My problem is that I can’t cast another recording without completly kill the Tablo app which is pretty inconvenient.

I don’t have this problem with any other app that I use to cast to my TV. That’s why I firmly believe that the problem is with the Tablo app and not SmartCast.

Sorry to hear this. We don’t have a Vizio TV in house but one of our team members has one at home so we’ll attempt to reproduce this issue for you.

The problem I have looke a lot like described in this post Android update broke Chromecast experience - can't fast forward.

The first thing that occurred to me in reading this thread is that the SmartCast environment does not yet include the Google Play Services Chromecast Support changes that I suspect fixed the Chromecast problems I reported, which included the Tablo app aborts. I never knew what fixed things, but what little version history I had made me suspect the fixes were in a Google update.

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If you are correct it might take some time. Third party vendors aren’t usually quick to implement updates. Google is trying to encourage faster third party updates in the phone market but TVs aren’t getting as much attention.