Key Points:
- An outage at Linode servers around the world caused all models of Tablo DVRs to stop working over the weekend.
- The outage impacts legacy Tablo DVRs and the newer, fourth-gen Tablo DVR with streaming channels.
- Nuvyyo, the company behind Tablo, said it is working on a fix that should restore functionality by Monday afternoon and promises further enhancements to prevent these issues in the future.
A large-scale outage at several data centers across the country crippled nearly all Tablo digital video recorders over the weekend, including “legacy” devices that have been in homes for several years, according to a note sent to customers on Monday.
The note originated from Nuvyyo, the Canadian technology firm owned by the E. W. Scripps Company that manufactures Tablo DVRs, which affirmed that an “emergency service issue” was triggered on Sunday after an outage involving Linode-owned data centers in several cities.
At first, the Linode data center in Newark, New Jersey was identified as the cause of authentication and remote streaming issues affecting legacy and newer-model Tablo devices. Over time, the issue extended to other Linode data centers in Dallas, Texas; Fremont, California; Washington, D.C. and other locations, Linode said in a weekend update.
In its note, Nuvyyo said it was working on a solution that would allow Tablo devices to regain all abilities to watch live and recorded TV and to stream content to smart TVs, tablets and phones by Monday afternoon. Around 1 p.m. Eastern Time, a spokesperson for Nuvyyo confirmed the devices were working once again, and said the issue over the weekend primarily impacted Tablo devices that were rebooted or otherwise changed their IP address during the Linode outage.
It is the second major issue affecting Tablo devices over the past twelve months, with the first occurring during the debut week of the National Football League’s regular season last year. The issue primarily affected the newer model, fourth-generation Tablo DVR, which requires the device to ping a data center to authenticate itself before streaming live or recorded TV to other devices using the Tablo app.
After that outage was resolved, officials confirmed to The Desk that Nuvyyo was working on an “offline mode” for the fourth-generation Tablo that would bypass the need to ping external servers in the event of an Internet outage or other issue. The legacy Tablo models did not require authentication to a server, or even an active Internet connection, before allowing users to watch live or recorded TV.
On Monday, Nuvyyo said it was still committed to the offline mode for both legacy and newer-model Tablos, but that the development of that feature was taking “longer than expected.” The company said the offline mode should be available across its product line by this fall.
In addition to the offline mode, Nuvyyo said it is working on a number of other features in order to avoid similar outages and to increase its customer support, including push notifications for Tablo apps on phones and tablets that will warn customers of a server-related outage or when “critical product updates” need to be delivered to their hardware.
Nuvyyo also said it will refresh an online portal that offers information about the status of its network and devies “to include Tablo infrastructure and service statuses.”
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