📡 Cut the cord, own your TV universe.
The Tablo 4th Gen 4-Tuner OTA DVR lets you watch, pause, record, and replay live local TV and free streaming channels across multiple devices via Wi-Fi. With 4 tuners, 128GB onboard storage expandable up to 8TB, and no subscription fees, it’s designed for flexible, whole-home entertainment that puts you in control of your viewing experience.
Brand Name | Tablo TV |
Item Weight | 1.15 pounds |
Product Dimensions | 5 x 5 x 1.38 inches |
Item model number | 4-Tuner DVR |
Color Name | White |
A**.
If you need to record Over-The-Air Network TV, timeshift, and skip the ads, Here Ya Go....
Excellent product. Tablo is exactly what I needed.Tablo 4-tuner, Gen 41. You will be able to receive to 100 HDTV channels, free, over-the-air [OTA] with an antenna. OTA is free and will always be free. Most large urban areas will see 80 to 100 channels.IMPORTANT NOTE: The small, cheepo "HDTV digital antennas" do NOT work well enough. Obviously, we hate pixelation and loss of signal, so I got a really GOOD antenna and set it up properly.Search Amazon for this: "Antennas Direct 8-Element Bowtie UHF Outdoor HDTV Antenna".Set up properly, it will receive ALL channels without any loss of signal. If the 8-element bow tie does not work, then you might explore other, more expensive options. Caution: YAGI antennas are too highly directional. The YAGI is designed to ignore signals that it is not aimed directly toward.2. Recording with a Tablo. With the 4-tuner Tablo, I can record 3 channels simultaneously while I watch a 4th. This is important to me during football season. And here's the best part: You can watch later and SKIP ALL OF THE COMMERCIAL ADS.3. Pausing Live TV. Yes you can. Gotta take a quick run to the kitchen? Pause "The Young and the Restless" until you get back. Tablo will be patiently waiting for your return with your Twinkie and RedBull. Flawlessly.4. Location for the Tablo. The Tablo DOES NOT NEED TO BE CO-LOCATED WITH A TV. Why does this matter? Because you can locate the Tablo with the antenna in a place where it does not show. [My antenna and Tablo are in the man cave, but the whole house can use the Tablo over WiFi]NOTE: My attic is TOO HOT for electronics that generate heat. If your attic stays a reasonable temperature year-round, you can put the antenna and the Tablo in the attic. Most attics get too hot during the summer to allow this, IMO. The Tablo does get warm.5. Inter-connectivity: The Tablo app can be installed on a number of devices (Smart TVs and Firestick, most importantly). To manage the app, you can use your phone with the Tablo app installed.Here is the great thing for me: The AMAZON FIRESTICK, with the Tablo App installed, works flawlessly. We already owned 2 Firesticks long before getting the Tablo.This is how we use the Tablo: Change to the Firestick, open the Tablo App and there you can select from any of the OTA channels. You can record a single episode, or the entire series to watch later. And skip the mind-numbing commercials.NOTE: I have often been frustrated by certain WiFi devices. Security cameras and doorbells especially. The Tablo can use 100% WiFi, but it also can be connected directly to your router with an Ethernet (CAT-5 or CAT-6) cable. This is the configuration I chose. The Tablo is connected to the router with a CAT-5 cable and from there, the signal uses WiFi to communicate with the Firesticks. It is bulletproof.NOTE: You must set up the Tablo to have a continuous connection to the internet. The Program Guide is constantly being updated. This should not be a problem for most people.Letter Grade for the Tablo: AThe negative reviews for this product were a little concerning for me. But those negative reviews mostly seemed to be frustrations with channels not detected and other antenna issues. Any devices that use OTA signals will need a top-quality antenna. People have downgraded the Tablo When the real problem is the antenna.Again I point out. Search Amazon for this: Search Amazon for this: "Antennas Direct 8-Element Bowtie UHF Outdoor HDTV Antenna".I had great difficulty getting decent signals where I live. For years. I tried every antenna. Some guaranteed to get signals from 10,000 miles away. Just go ahead and get yourself an antenna that works. Thank me later.Enjoy!
P**T
No PC access to Recordings and The App for Android TV ruins the experience
I have been using this Tablo for 6 months now and wanted to share my experience with it. Do I have a faulty one? Not sure.Tablo works well in terms of recording my shows. Great. This is job #1 for this device. I can schedule shows to be recorded from any app that's connected to the device. This is nice, sometimes it's easier to schedule a show to record from my phone instead of booting up the TV. However, I cannot connect a PC to the Tablo. I have had Tivo's, Home built PC DVR's and (going way back) ReplayTVs. All of which provided PC access to their recordings. But this Tablo? Nope. Even older Tablos had this feature and they removed it for this generation device. A head scratcher.My experience using the the various apps to control the Tablo varies significantly based on the platform. I bought this device to watch recordings on my 2 Android TVs. (I also have a Roku and the experience I share below for Android TV is almost exactly the same as Roku) What I have found is that the Android app on my Pixel phone or Pixel Tablet is reliable and will almost always bring up the interface, as long as the Device itself hasn't crashed. My device crashes every couple of weeks. Acceptable? Not really. But my Tablo is very hot to the touch so I'm not really surprised about this.The problems really start when trying to connect to the Tablo using an Android TV. I have a Sony and a Hisense - both run Android TV and both have the same issues with Tablo. Most of the time when I want to use Tablo, the app won't even launch. I just get a blank screen with a spinning arrow (photo). Wait several minutes to see if it will eventually launch and then I start my process of debugging the issue. It is slightly more reliable when I use the back button over and over again to exit the app every time I use it. This is time consuming and sometimes it still fails to launch maybe every other day. At this point, it could be a problem with the app or the Tablo itself has crashed. If I have my phone handy, I'll bring up the app there to see if the device has crashed. If so, I will reset the Tablo with the button on the bottom. If I reset it and it still doesn't launch. I have to navigate to the app properties tor the Tablo app on my TV (no small feat!) and do a clear cache / clear memory on the app. This fixes it most of the time. But I have had cases in the past where I had to reboot my TV to get it working again. It might be slightly little more reliable lately in the past month or so, but it updates automatically and I don't know when it is updated and I don't see a way to view release notes to see if anything was improved or fixed.Then there is the issue with the channel guide. I receive >150 OTA channels, which is great, but I only want to see my favorite 10-15 channels in the channel guide instead of the scrolling through all 150 of them. So I setup my 'favorite' channels in Tablo and setup the channel guide so it only shows my favorites. Nice feature, but every time I launch the app, the channel guide is blank below the first 3 channels (photo). I have to scroll up and down a bunch of times and eventually a few of the lower numbered channels start showing up with data, but for the rest of the channels, data never shows up. I have to switch it back to the full channel guide with 150 channels to actually see what it currently being broadcast. Maybe it's just me, but it's still a huge annoyance.Anyway, I'm 6 months in and I am desperate to find something else to use instead of Tablo. This was was a huge letdown after using consistently good DVR's for the past 20 years. I hung around for a while thinking the manufacturer would fix these issues, but nope. Not yet. Time to move on.
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