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Tablo Quad Over-The-air [OTA] Digital Video Recorder [DVR] for Cord...
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Customer reviews
- Tablo Quad Over-The-air [OTA] Digital Video Recorder [DVR] for Cord...
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- Customer reviews
![Tablo Quad Over-The-air [OTA] Digital Video Recorder [DVR] for Cord Cutters - with WiFi, Live TV Streaming, & Automatic Commercial Skip](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31GwT-bHvrL._AC_US60_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
Top positive review
Tablo out does my expectations
February 24, 2019
this is a follow up review 9 mo. after purchase.
i have had the tablo for 9 months and i don't know what i would do without it. it performs beautifully. the operation was a little sketchy but i was used to the tivo and this worked a little differently, tho it does the same things as a tivo.
i cut the cord nearly 6 yrs ago and never looked back.
thank you tablo for being there.
my TiVo died and after much searching and studying, we decided on a Tablo OTA (over the air) tuner and dvr.
it came in after only 3 days. cudos to prime shipping.
I hooked up the antenna, ethernet to the router, plugged in an external hard drive, and power cord.
I had a bit of trouble with the program. it required I download an app from google store to setup thru the laptop.
that didn't work.
next it said download though a tablet. ok.
that went smooth as can be. as I performed the setup on the kindle I saw the changes take place on the tv.
within 45 min I went thru setup, assessed all the features, set my programs to record, and actually recorded and played back programming as a test.
it's like having a better TiVo. it makes me wish the TiVo would have gone out a long time ago.
now TiVo's channel guide costs $16 per month. Tablo's is $5 per month, or $50 per year, or $150 for a lifetime subscription. (my lifetime, not the machine's.)
I think i'll go for the lifetime deal.
at $16 per month it will pay itself off in 18 months.
I've been a cord cutter for about 5 yrs now. I enjoy saving that $1400 per year from NOT having DTV.
losing TiVo is a small blessing but still a saving of $192 per year.
I use Roku as my main media box, and right there in a row, I have: Tablo, You-Tube, Netflix, Prime, Media player, and the Police Chase Channel.
(if you are considering cutting the cord, you owe it to yourself to check out Roku and the thousands of channels it offers.)
the Tablo experience has made me a happy camper.
i have had the tablo for 9 months and i don't know what i would do without it. it performs beautifully. the operation was a little sketchy but i was used to the tivo and this worked a little differently, tho it does the same things as a tivo.
i cut the cord nearly 6 yrs ago and never looked back.
thank you tablo for being there.
my TiVo died and after much searching and studying, we decided on a Tablo OTA (over the air) tuner and dvr.
it came in after only 3 days. cudos to prime shipping.
I hooked up the antenna, ethernet to the router, plugged in an external hard drive, and power cord.
I had a bit of trouble with the program. it required I download an app from google store to setup thru the laptop.
that didn't work.
next it said download though a tablet. ok.
that went smooth as can be. as I performed the setup on the kindle I saw the changes take place on the tv.
within 45 min I went thru setup, assessed all the features, set my programs to record, and actually recorded and played back programming as a test.
it's like having a better TiVo. it makes me wish the TiVo would have gone out a long time ago.
now TiVo's channel guide costs $16 per month. Tablo's is $5 per month, or $50 per year, or $150 for a lifetime subscription. (my lifetime, not the machine's.)
I think i'll go for the lifetime deal.
at $16 per month it will pay itself off in 18 months.
I've been a cord cutter for about 5 yrs now. I enjoy saving that $1400 per year from NOT having DTV.
losing TiVo is a small blessing but still a saving of $192 per year.
I use Roku as my main media box, and right there in a row, I have: Tablo, You-Tube, Netflix, Prime, Media player, and the Police Chase Channel.
(if you are considering cutting the cord, you owe it to yourself to check out Roku and the thousands of channels it offers.)
the Tablo experience has made me a happy camper.
79 people found this helpful
Top critical review
Dual Tablo So so - need work
February 9, 2019
Update 3/12/2019 - After a few weeks of use I am lowering my review to 2 stars. My major complaint is the overall performance is horrible and often so annoying I do not want to use the Tablo app. The guide can take several MINUTES to load sometimes, and live TV playback can take 20 seconds or more to start up. I called Tablo support and they suggested I download the "Tablo Preview" app. I had seen that app before and thought it was some crippled version of the app that was targeted at people looking to see what the product was all about, but that is not correct. Tablo Preview is the next gen of their app (it really should be called Tablo V2.0 Beta imho). This version does work better, but the issues with the guide populating the matrix on the screen has not been resolved. Earlier I stated that these issues were only happening with the FireStick client, but I have noticed the issue on the browser connection as well. Sometimes I get an error back saying "The Sync process was unsuccessful due to a database error". This issue is happening more and more now, in fact I cannot watch Live TV via the browser at all at the moment. I also notice that when I move from one client device to another, the depiction on the Recordings screen is different between the various clients - i.e. TV1 client reports that I have 5 episodes of Big Bang Theory recorded, while TV2 says there are only 3. Getting very frustrated and contemplating returning this thing.
I cut the cord years ago and I have been using a SlingBox connected to a friend's cable service set top box. That works well, but I figured I could setup a DVR to record content from the some 60 channels I can get off my OTA antenna setup. My client devices are Amazon FireSticks - I have one on every TV in the house.
Why Tablo: I chose Tablo largely based on these reviews here, and the fact I can put what ever storage I wanted on the Tablo, unlike the Amazon Fire TV Recast which locks you into either 500GB or 1TB of storage, and the Amazon box is a bit more expensive (well for me it was as I have hard drives kicking around already to use for storage), and since this was largely an experiment for me, I did not want to spend a lot testing it out.
Setup: Pretty easy. Make sure you have a good antenna setup. It should go without saying that the better the signal the better image and reliability all around. I am running two TV antennas (see image) into a splitter/combiner which affords me more channels and better/reliable signal quality. On the coax end of things, I have my TV antenna connected to every TV in the house via a another splitter, as well as the Tablo of course. I plugged the Tablo into my Ethernet switch directly (not using Wifi to link it to my LAN, only using Wifi for the FireStick clients). I connected a 250GB SSD disk I had kicking around for the storage. Again that is not a lot of storage but I am testing this out.
Dual vs Quad: Tablo informed me prior to purchase that the only difference between the two main models of their product is the quad has two more tuners, allowing 4 concurrent things to happen (on the quad) such as 3 users watching and 1 recording, or 2 remote users watching on tablets/phones and 2 watching at home. They told me there was no difference in the CPU between dual and quad. Since I have my TV signal going to every TV in the house via coax directly, and all I really wanted to do was be able to record while watching another show, the quad was not all that necessary for me since I can watch via coax off the air directly and let the Tablo record 2 shows for me. Of course when watching directly off the antenna like this you do not benefit from the ability to pause and rewind a show, which watching off the Tablo allows you to do.
Remote access: Access via a phone or tablet worked well for me. Only issue you need to be aware of here is you MUST Sync/Link the Tablo app on your phone/tablet to the Tablo on your LAN when you are connected to your local LAN/WiFi - you cannot do this remotely (i.e while being away from your home network). Once this is done, then the app on your remote device knows where to go find your Tablo at home for remote viewing. Remote viewing quality will be a function of the network access (throughput) availale to your phone/tablet. The settings on the Tablo allow you to configure how much bandwidth the remote device can consume when streaming.
Pros: Tablo allows you to view your OTA channels in a manner similar to how your cable company DVR works. You can record shows, pause, rewind, view the channel guide, schedule recordings, search upcoming shows, and, view all of this from your phone or tablet remotely. Image quality (the way I have it setup) is very good.
Cons: My biggest compliant is speed of the Tablo app on the FireStick. It is SLOW - takes some 15-20 seconds to launch the app. I am running the 1.3 GHz (non 4k Ultra) FireStick, so I am not sure if the issue here is the Firestick or the Tablo system itself. Scrolling through the guide, switching channels etc is lethargic - it is definitely not what I can describe as snappy performance. Again, I don't know if this is the Tablo or the fact I am using an older generation FireStick. Again scrolling the guide is very annoying since it seems to take forever to load, and you pretty much have to scroll the guide to switch channels. There is no way (that I have found anyway) to directly jump to another channel without scrolling through the guide (if I am wrong on this someone please post a comment correcting me). I believe the speed issue with the guide is in part due to Tablo pulling content for the guide from a remote host out on the Internet. Tablo should fix this so it caches more objects locally on the Tablo hard disk. They must be doing some aspect of that now but for some reason it seems slow for me. I have had one occasion so far when using my tablet in the house as a client where the session disconnected unexpectedly, with an error saying my tuner was disconnected. No one else was using the system at the time but me. Only other reason I can think this may have happened is there were two recordings scheduled at that time and both tuners were needed to service that request. Lastly, when connecting the web browser client I had the sync process report "The sync process failed due to a database error". I have no idea what cause that. I resynced and it worked fine.
Summary: Tablo is a good effort to make OTA TV signals "feel" like a cable DVR service. Lots of good features and good visual implementation. I just wish the performance on FireSticks were faster, but, as I mentioned, this might be more a FireStick resources issue (cache perhaps) than a Tablo issue as the guide and usability on my tablet, phone, and web browser clients are all reasonably snappy.
I cut the cord years ago and I have been using a SlingBox connected to a friend's cable service set top box. That works well, but I figured I could setup a DVR to record content from the some 60 channels I can get off my OTA antenna setup. My client devices are Amazon FireSticks - I have one on every TV in the house.
Why Tablo: I chose Tablo largely based on these reviews here, and the fact I can put what ever storage I wanted on the Tablo, unlike the Amazon Fire TV Recast which locks you into either 500GB or 1TB of storage, and the Amazon box is a bit more expensive (well for me it was as I have hard drives kicking around already to use for storage), and since this was largely an experiment for me, I did not want to spend a lot testing it out.
Setup: Pretty easy. Make sure you have a good antenna setup. It should go without saying that the better the signal the better image and reliability all around. I am running two TV antennas (see image) into a splitter/combiner which affords me more channels and better/reliable signal quality. On the coax end of things, I have my TV antenna connected to every TV in the house via a another splitter, as well as the Tablo of course. I plugged the Tablo into my Ethernet switch directly (not using Wifi to link it to my LAN, only using Wifi for the FireStick clients). I connected a 250GB SSD disk I had kicking around for the storage. Again that is not a lot of storage but I am testing this out.
Dual vs Quad: Tablo informed me prior to purchase that the only difference between the two main models of their product is the quad has two more tuners, allowing 4 concurrent things to happen (on the quad) such as 3 users watching and 1 recording, or 2 remote users watching on tablets/phones and 2 watching at home. They told me there was no difference in the CPU between dual and quad. Since I have my TV signal going to every TV in the house via coax directly, and all I really wanted to do was be able to record while watching another show, the quad was not all that necessary for me since I can watch via coax off the air directly and let the Tablo record 2 shows for me. Of course when watching directly off the antenna like this you do not benefit from the ability to pause and rewind a show, which watching off the Tablo allows you to do.
Remote access: Access via a phone or tablet worked well for me. Only issue you need to be aware of here is you MUST Sync/Link the Tablo app on your phone/tablet to the Tablo on your LAN when you are connected to your local LAN/WiFi - you cannot do this remotely (i.e while being away from your home network). Once this is done, then the app on your remote device knows where to go find your Tablo at home for remote viewing. Remote viewing quality will be a function of the network access (throughput) availale to your phone/tablet. The settings on the Tablo allow you to configure how much bandwidth the remote device can consume when streaming.
Pros: Tablo allows you to view your OTA channels in a manner similar to how your cable company DVR works. You can record shows, pause, rewind, view the channel guide, schedule recordings, search upcoming shows, and, view all of this from your phone or tablet remotely. Image quality (the way I have it setup) is very good.
Cons: My biggest compliant is speed of the Tablo app on the FireStick. It is SLOW - takes some 15-20 seconds to launch the app. I am running the 1.3 GHz (non 4k Ultra) FireStick, so I am not sure if the issue here is the Firestick or the Tablo system itself. Scrolling through the guide, switching channels etc is lethargic - it is definitely not what I can describe as snappy performance. Again, I don't know if this is the Tablo or the fact I am using an older generation FireStick. Again scrolling the guide is very annoying since it seems to take forever to load, and you pretty much have to scroll the guide to switch channels. There is no way (that I have found anyway) to directly jump to another channel without scrolling through the guide (if I am wrong on this someone please post a comment correcting me). I believe the speed issue with the guide is in part due to Tablo pulling content for the guide from a remote host out on the Internet. Tablo should fix this so it caches more objects locally on the Tablo hard disk. They must be doing some aspect of that now but for some reason it seems slow for me. I have had one occasion so far when using my tablet in the house as a client where the session disconnected unexpectedly, with an error saying my tuner was disconnected. No one else was using the system at the time but me. Only other reason I can think this may have happened is there were two recordings scheduled at that time and both tuners were needed to service that request. Lastly, when connecting the web browser client I had the sync process report "The sync process failed due to a database error". I have no idea what cause that. I resynced and it worked fine.
Summary: Tablo is a good effort to make OTA TV signals "feel" like a cable DVR service. Lots of good features and good visual implementation. I just wish the performance on FireSticks were faster, but, as I mentioned, this might be more a FireStick resources issue (cache perhaps) than a Tablo issue as the guide and usability on my tablet, phone, and web browser clients are all reasonably snappy.
49 people found this helpful
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February 9, 2019
Update 3/12/2019 - After a few weeks of use I am lowering my review to 2 stars. My major complaint is the overall performance is horrible and often so annoying I do not want to use the Tablo app. The guide can take several MINUTES to load sometimes, and live TV playback can take 20 seconds or more to start up. I called Tablo support and they suggested I download the "Tablo Preview" app. I had seen that app before and thought it was some crippled version of the app that was targeted at people looking to see what the product was all about, but that is not correct. Tablo Preview is the next gen of their app (it really should be called Tablo V2.0 Beta imho). This version does work better, but the issues with the guide populating the matrix on the screen has not been resolved. Earlier I stated that these issues were only happening with the FireStick client, but I have noticed the issue on the browser connection as well. Sometimes I get an error back saying "The Sync process was unsuccessful due to a database error". This issue is happening more and more now, in fact I cannot watch Live TV via the browser at all at the moment. I also notice that when I move from one client device to another, the depiction on the Recordings screen is different between the various clients - i.e. TV1 client reports that I have 5 episodes of Big Bang Theory recorded, while TV2 says there are only 3. Getting very frustrated and contemplating returning this thing.
I cut the cord years ago and I have been using a SlingBox connected to a friend's cable service set top box. That works well, but I figured I could setup a DVR to record content from the some 60 channels I can get off my OTA antenna setup. My client devices are Amazon FireSticks - I have one on every TV in the house.
Why Tablo: I chose Tablo largely based on these reviews here, and the fact I can put what ever storage I wanted on the Tablo, unlike the Amazon Fire TV Recast which locks you into either 500GB or 1TB of storage, and the Amazon box is a bit more expensive (well for me it was as I have hard drives kicking around already to use for storage), and since this was largely an experiment for me, I did not want to spend a lot testing it out.
Setup: Pretty easy. Make sure you have a good antenna setup. It should go without saying that the better the signal the better image and reliability all around. I am running two TV antennas (see image) into a splitter/combiner which affords me more channels and better/reliable signal quality. On the coax end of things, I have my TV antenna connected to every TV in the house via a another splitter, as well as the Tablo of course. I plugged the Tablo into my Ethernet switch directly (not using Wifi to link it to my LAN, only using Wifi for the FireStick clients). I connected a 250GB SSD disk I had kicking around for the storage. Again that is not a lot of storage but I am testing this out.
Dual vs Quad: Tablo informed me prior to purchase that the only difference between the two main models of their product is the quad has two more tuners, allowing 4 concurrent things to happen (on the quad) such as 3 users watching and 1 recording, or 2 remote users watching on tablets/phones and 2 watching at home. They told me there was no difference in the CPU between dual and quad. Since I have my TV signal going to every TV in the house via coax directly, and all I really wanted to do was be able to record while watching another show, the quad was not all that necessary for me since I can watch via coax off the air directly and let the Tablo record 2 shows for me. Of course when watching directly off the antenna like this you do not benefit from the ability to pause and rewind a show, which watching off the Tablo allows you to do.
Remote access: Access via a phone or tablet worked well for me. Only issue you need to be aware of here is you MUST Sync/Link the Tablo app on your phone/tablet to the Tablo on your LAN when you are connected to your local LAN/WiFi - you cannot do this remotely (i.e while being away from your home network). Once this is done, then the app on your remote device knows where to go find your Tablo at home for remote viewing. Remote viewing quality will be a function of the network access (throughput) availale to your phone/tablet. The settings on the Tablo allow you to configure how much bandwidth the remote device can consume when streaming.
Pros: Tablo allows you to view your OTA channels in a manner similar to how your cable company DVR works. You can record shows, pause, rewind, view the channel guide, schedule recordings, search upcoming shows, and, view all of this from your phone or tablet remotely. Image quality (the way I have it setup) is very good.
Cons: My biggest compliant is speed of the Tablo app on the FireStick. It is SLOW - takes some 15-20 seconds to launch the app. I am running the 1.3 GHz (non 4k Ultra) FireStick, so I am not sure if the issue here is the Firestick or the Tablo system itself. Scrolling through the guide, switching channels etc is lethargic - it is definitely not what I can describe as snappy performance. Again, I don't know if this is the Tablo or the fact I am using an older generation FireStick. Again scrolling the guide is very annoying since it seems to take forever to load, and you pretty much have to scroll the guide to switch channels. There is no way (that I have found anyway) to directly jump to another channel without scrolling through the guide (if I am wrong on this someone please post a comment correcting me). I believe the speed issue with the guide is in part due to Tablo pulling content for the guide from a remote host out on the Internet. Tablo should fix this so it caches more objects locally on the Tablo hard disk. They must be doing some aspect of that now but for some reason it seems slow for me. I have had one occasion so far when using my tablet in the house as a client where the session disconnected unexpectedly, with an error saying my tuner was disconnected. No one else was using the system at the time but me. Only other reason I can think this may have happened is there were two recordings scheduled at that time and both tuners were needed to service that request. Lastly, when connecting the web browser client I had the sync process report "The sync process failed due to a database error". I have no idea what cause that. I resynced and it worked fine.
Summary: Tablo is a good effort to make OTA TV signals "feel" like a cable DVR service. Lots of good features and good visual implementation. I just wish the performance on FireSticks were faster, but, as I mentioned, this might be more a FireStick resources issue (cache perhaps) than a Tablo issue as the guide and usability on my tablet, phone, and web browser clients are all reasonably snappy.
I cut the cord years ago and I have been using a SlingBox connected to a friend's cable service set top box. That works well, but I figured I could setup a DVR to record content from the some 60 channels I can get off my OTA antenna setup. My client devices are Amazon FireSticks - I have one on every TV in the house.
Why Tablo: I chose Tablo largely based on these reviews here, and the fact I can put what ever storage I wanted on the Tablo, unlike the Amazon Fire TV Recast which locks you into either 500GB or 1TB of storage, and the Amazon box is a bit more expensive (well for me it was as I have hard drives kicking around already to use for storage), and since this was largely an experiment for me, I did not want to spend a lot testing it out.
Setup: Pretty easy. Make sure you have a good antenna setup. It should go without saying that the better the signal the better image and reliability all around. I am running two TV antennas (see image) into a splitter/combiner which affords me more channels and better/reliable signal quality. On the coax end of things, I have my TV antenna connected to every TV in the house via a another splitter, as well as the Tablo of course. I plugged the Tablo into my Ethernet switch directly (not using Wifi to link it to my LAN, only using Wifi for the FireStick clients). I connected a 250GB SSD disk I had kicking around for the storage. Again that is not a lot of storage but I am testing this out.
Dual vs Quad: Tablo informed me prior to purchase that the only difference between the two main models of their product is the quad has two more tuners, allowing 4 concurrent things to happen (on the quad) such as 3 users watching and 1 recording, or 2 remote users watching on tablets/phones and 2 watching at home. They told me there was no difference in the CPU between dual and quad. Since I have my TV signal going to every TV in the house via coax directly, and all I really wanted to do was be able to record while watching another show, the quad was not all that necessary for me since I can watch via coax off the air directly and let the Tablo record 2 shows for me. Of course when watching directly off the antenna like this you do not benefit from the ability to pause and rewind a show, which watching off the Tablo allows you to do.
Remote access: Access via a phone or tablet worked well for me. Only issue you need to be aware of here is you MUST Sync/Link the Tablo app on your phone/tablet to the Tablo on your LAN when you are connected to your local LAN/WiFi - you cannot do this remotely (i.e while being away from your home network). Once this is done, then the app on your remote device knows where to go find your Tablo at home for remote viewing. Remote viewing quality will be a function of the network access (throughput) availale to your phone/tablet. The settings on the Tablo allow you to configure how much bandwidth the remote device can consume when streaming.
Pros: Tablo allows you to view your OTA channels in a manner similar to how your cable company DVR works. You can record shows, pause, rewind, view the channel guide, schedule recordings, search upcoming shows, and, view all of this from your phone or tablet remotely. Image quality (the way I have it setup) is very good.
Cons: My biggest compliant is speed of the Tablo app on the FireStick. It is SLOW - takes some 15-20 seconds to launch the app. I am running the 1.3 GHz (non 4k Ultra) FireStick, so I am not sure if the issue here is the Firestick or the Tablo system itself. Scrolling through the guide, switching channels etc is lethargic - it is definitely not what I can describe as snappy performance. Again, I don't know if this is the Tablo or the fact I am using an older generation FireStick. Again scrolling the guide is very annoying since it seems to take forever to load, and you pretty much have to scroll the guide to switch channels. There is no way (that I have found anyway) to directly jump to another channel without scrolling through the guide (if I am wrong on this someone please post a comment correcting me). I believe the speed issue with the guide is in part due to Tablo pulling content for the guide from a remote host out on the Internet. Tablo should fix this so it caches more objects locally on the Tablo hard disk. They must be doing some aspect of that now but for some reason it seems slow for me. I have had one occasion so far when using my tablet in the house as a client where the session disconnected unexpectedly, with an error saying my tuner was disconnected. No one else was using the system at the time but me. Only other reason I can think this may have happened is there were two recordings scheduled at that time and both tuners were needed to service that request. Lastly, when connecting the web browser client I had the sync process report "The sync process failed due to a database error". I have no idea what cause that. I resynced and it worked fine.
Summary: Tablo is a good effort to make OTA TV signals "feel" like a cable DVR service. Lots of good features and good visual implementation. I just wish the performance on FireSticks were faster, but, as I mentioned, this might be more a FireStick resources issue (cache perhaps) than a Tablo issue as the guide and usability on my tablet, phone, and web browser clients are all reasonably snappy.
May 28, 2019
My issues with this product are:
1) Tablo app is very slow to start
2) Changing channels take too long
3) 1080 resolution channels must be reduced to 720 for consistent TV reception. 720 does not look as good on a 4k TV
4) Changing the sound setting from stereo to Dolby will cause no sound on smaller TV's and tablets. Tablo does a terrible job explaining this problem. Fix involves hard reset & restarting TABLO after changing back to stereo.
5) TABLO only works with Roku and Amazon fire TV and sticks. I was not able to get it to work with my 70" Samsung TV.
6) Recording live TV is very difficult to do unless you subscribe to TABLO.
In summary changing channels is a bad experience, resolution is not as good as the antenna and sound processing is only in stereo. Recording live TV is costly.
1) Tablo app is very slow to start
2) Changing channels take too long
3) 1080 resolution channels must be reduced to 720 for consistent TV reception. 720 does not look as good on a 4k TV
4) Changing the sound setting from stereo to Dolby will cause no sound on smaller TV's and tablets. Tablo does a terrible job explaining this problem. Fix involves hard reset & restarting TABLO after changing back to stereo.
5) TABLO only works with Roku and Amazon fire TV and sticks. I was not able to get it to work with my 70" Samsung TV.
6) Recording live TV is very difficult to do unless you subscribe to TABLO.
In summary changing channels is a bad experience, resolution is not as good as the antenna and sound processing is only in stereo. Recording live TV is costly.
July 3, 2019
I was very excited to receive this device. I thought it would allow for multiple recordings of OTA channels, which it does do. Unfortunately, it has weak reception. All I was looking for was a simple device to record OTA TV shows. I do not need all the extra streaming shows and ads for shows. I just want to record and play back TV shows. But, like I said, it has weak reception.
I contacted customer service about the issue. They started with the normal spiel about antenna position and that receiving on a TV is different as it does not encode the signal for recording, but I have tested a TiVO OTA and a Fire TV Recast, both of which had far better signal reception. With the Tablo Quad, I even had entire channels and frequencies missing.
But, that is not my issue. My issue is the length of time it takes to get a response from their support. So far, all responses have taken over a day. On their last response, they asked me to give them remote access to the device, which I did that morning. They never bothered to attempt the access until the following day. I emailed them to ask about it and they never responded. It was not until the next day I even got a response.
So, why would I, or why should anyone, put out the effort to use the Tablo Quad when their support is not willing to put out the effort to make sure the device is working properly?
I contacted customer service about the issue. They started with the normal spiel about antenna position and that receiving on a TV is different as it does not encode the signal for recording, but I have tested a TiVO OTA and a Fire TV Recast, both of which had far better signal reception. With the Tablo Quad, I even had entire channels and frequencies missing.
But, that is not my issue. My issue is the length of time it takes to get a response from their support. So far, all responses have taken over a day. On their last response, they asked me to give them remote access to the device, which I did that morning. They never bothered to attempt the access until the following day. I emailed them to ask about it and they never responded. It was not until the next day I even got a response.
So, why would I, or why should anyone, put out the effort to use the Tablo Quad when their support is not willing to put out the effort to make sure the device is working properly?
March 9, 2019
Fairly inexpensive alternative to recording Over the Air channels when it works. It will overheat if left on it's base feet, then it disconnects from the internet and router, forcing a reboot by unplugging it. If the signal is the least bit weak it goes into a buffering mode that stalls the viewing for several seconds every minute or so. Using HULU I discovered that their "Live" tv has most of the programming OTA has and the need to record it is thereby diminished. The service is pretty good, they sent a new unit the same day I called in for help, but, the second one had the same problems, they were then hesitant to send another unit, so, I asked for Amazon to send another, they did, same problems, but I learned if I tilted the unit on it's nose it solved the overheating problem but not the buffering problem. HULU does have some of the OTA programming, but not all. You need to check out what they can do and if that fulfills your needs - there ya go. For the cost of this unit it's more economical than others available for several hundred, but it does have problems. It will not record anything if the signal isn't strong enough, check out your signal before you order! It will NOT record future programs without a subscription, without this option, it is simply a poor performing over the air antenna. JUNK!
May 24, 2019
When this works it is great with great picture quality and a choice of resolutions. Gives you a daily schedule and easy to record programs. However, my antenna and router are too far apart to use Ethernet, so I have to connect my tablo to my home network by WiFi. It is easy to set up, but even though the WiFi signal strength is excellent at the placement of the Tablo, the Tablo keeps dropping the signal, making it almost useless to use if you cannot hook it to your router by Ethernet. I am deciding whether or not to return it. For $100 I expected it to work better. My Roku which is next to the Tablo streams fine. Do not buy it if you have to connect over WiFi
Update: I moved the device and it worked well for about 3 weeks with little to no buffering, so I decided to keep the unit. Funny thing was that the device was working in the furthest corner of the house and, a bit baffled, but happy I recorded some tv shows for later viewing. They recorded fine. Then a week after the return policy ran out, the device started buffering every couple of minutes again. My gamble cost me $100. Device is useless now. Not only that, but since it uses some sort of proprietary formatting on the storage device, my recorded shows are not accessible. I bought this because PC World magazine
Update: I moved the device and it worked well for about 3 weeks with little to no buffering, so I decided to keep the unit. Funny thing was that the device was working in the furthest corner of the house and, a bit baffled, but happy I recorded some tv shows for later viewing. They recorded fine. Then a week after the return policy ran out, the device started buffering every couple of minutes again. My gamble cost me $100. Device is useless now. Not only that, but since it uses some sort of proprietary formatting on the storage device, my recorded shows are not accessible. I bought this because PC World magazine
July 11, 2019
Overall the Tablo is easy to use and mimics a cable/satellite interface for ease of use. The ability to use any size hard drive as your DVR is one of its best features. Built-in commercial skip is also an awesome feature. The purchase price of the Tablo and a hard drive is good, but you’ll almost certainly need to pay for guide data after that to actually make it useful ($150 for lifetime subscription for 1 unit only, not your account). Hopefully that $150 will help fund future updates to address some of the issues below.
Web access to the Tablo is limited to pre-configured devices. You can’t access remotely from the web on any web-browser – you have to first sync a laptop while on the same network as the Tablo before you can access remotely from that laptop. It would be nice to login from any web browser to schedule future recordings.
The Android app. works but is very slow to use. Every time you start the app it has to sync up with the Tablo. It takes about a minute to sync the recordings listing and guide information before you can actually start using the app as you’d expect. Another limitation is that you can’t download files from the Tablo for offline playback with the native Tablo application. A 3rd party application, ota2go, does allow for this so clearly it could be added. Another major limitation is that files recorded in surround sound likely won’t play sound on the phone or tablet. This is a limitation of the Tablo app; if you use ota2go to download the file and play the file back with VLC, surround sound files play with sound just fine. So you must choose stereo so it also works with phones and tablets and thus limits surround sound when playing shows at home. A major limitation of the application is that it only displays 1 day of guide data, despite the mobile application being a likely place you’d want to schedule future recordings from. Finally, the application does not support picture-in-picture video playback that was introduced in Android Oreo.
The Roku app has improved, mostly with 14 days of guide data now being supported (in beta at this time). A missing feature of the guide is to select a day in the future rather than having to scroll through days to get to that future date. The Roku app is also slow to startup, but runs quickly once up and synced with the Tablo. Compared to cable/satellite changing channels is slow, but similar to other streaming channels (SlingTV for example).
Web access to the Tablo is limited to pre-configured devices. You can’t access remotely from the web on any web-browser – you have to first sync a laptop while on the same network as the Tablo before you can access remotely from that laptop. It would be nice to login from any web browser to schedule future recordings.
The Android app. works but is very slow to use. Every time you start the app it has to sync up with the Tablo. It takes about a minute to sync the recordings listing and guide information before you can actually start using the app as you’d expect. Another limitation is that you can’t download files from the Tablo for offline playback with the native Tablo application. A 3rd party application, ota2go, does allow for this so clearly it could be added. Another major limitation is that files recorded in surround sound likely won’t play sound on the phone or tablet. This is a limitation of the Tablo app; if you use ota2go to download the file and play the file back with VLC, surround sound files play with sound just fine. So you must choose stereo so it also works with phones and tablets and thus limits surround sound when playing shows at home. A major limitation of the application is that it only displays 1 day of guide data, despite the mobile application being a likely place you’d want to schedule future recordings from. Finally, the application does not support picture-in-picture video playback that was introduced in Android Oreo.
The Roku app has improved, mostly with 14 days of guide data now being supported (in beta at this time). A missing feature of the guide is to select a day in the future rather than having to scroll through days to get to that future date. The Roku app is also slow to startup, but runs quickly once up and synced with the Tablo. Compared to cable/satellite changing channels is slow, but similar to other streaming channels (SlingTV for example).
July 31, 2019
I know this is the highest rated OTA DRV on the market but my experience is that the Tablo has a lot to be desired. It's slow to change channels (faster than it used to be however), it has a lot of network issues even when I have it wired directly to my router (no similar issues with Netflix, Prime etc) and it often 'steals' a tuner when nothing is scheduled to be recorded. For me, the biggest problem is that it doesn't get all the channels I want all the time. For example, I lost the local NBC channel and I thought it was a problem with the antenna. But when I plugged the antenna cable directly into a TV, the lost channel appeared along with others that the Tablo wasn't getting.
The user interface (Roku app) is functional but in my mind it seems a little unpolished and unintuitive. The TV grid is NOT a full 7 or 14 day grid - it just shows you the next 24 hours. To see the next week or so, you need to zero in on a particular program. That seems a little weird to me.
But overall it works. It just doesn't seem to be as fantastic as all the reviews make it out to be.
The user interface (Roku app) is functional but in my mind it seems a little unpolished and unintuitive. The TV grid is NOT a full 7 or 14 day grid - it just shows you the next 24 hours. To see the next week or so, you need to zero in on a particular program. That seems a little weird to me.
But overall it works. It just doesn't seem to be as fantastic as all the reviews make it out to be.
November 17, 2019
I had good hopes on this device to replace my Tivo and cable TV service, but what a disappointment. The channel scan worked fine and found about 30 channels, most of them were rated at the highest strength. However when I record or watch live the picture is sometimes or often pixilated or it freezes. It often displays a message that the ota signal is too weak, even though the status of that channel indicates full strength. Audio has similar problems.
If I watch a recorded show while another show is recording, the recording channel interferes with the stream of the recorded show that I'm trying to watch. This thing is supposed to be able to record up to 4 channels simultaneously, but a problem with one channel interferes with the others. The device often seems to reboot and go offline for a couple minutes and then try to restart all the recordings again. And sometimes the device just freezes and becomes completely unresponsive until I pull the power plug and restart it.
Customer service is nonexistent. I tried to call and email them but am still waiting for a response. Do not buy this product!!
If I watch a recorded show while another show is recording, the recording channel interferes with the stream of the recorded show that I'm trying to watch. This thing is supposed to be able to record up to 4 channels simultaneously, but a problem with one channel interferes with the others. The device often seems to reboot and go offline for a couple minutes and then try to restart all the recordings again. And sometimes the device just freezes and becomes completely unresponsive until I pull the power plug and restart it.
Customer service is nonexistent. I tried to call and email them but am still waiting for a response. Do not buy this product!!
November 25, 2019
I purchased this in Jan 2019 and installed in March 2019 after installing the attic antenna. It has never worked reliably for me even though a neighbor close by has had success with a quad Tablo unit. The main issue is the Tablo unit would constantly go "offline" requiring a manual reboot (usually remove the power cord for a few seconds and plug back in). There is no message or blinking light or any other way to determine it went offline until you want to use the device or the app to watch a live program or a scheduled recording. I missed many scheduled programs because of this unreliability (and a very unhappy spouse missing This is Us recordings). In addition, if away on vacation, there is no way to remotely reboot this unit. I would know it went offline (1000 miles away) because I could not longer log into the device, but could do nothing about it until I returned home. Not a good design.
More specific details. Soon after installation I started having this device offline issue. After some further research (online and talking to the neighbor) I upgraded to the antenna to ANTOP AT-415B (which the neighbor recommended and uses for his Tablo OTA unit - which does not go offline for the same OTA channels). I still ran into the same offline issues and reached out to Tech support in July.
For a period of two months we tried to work through what was wrong. I tried various options they suggested. Since the support is only a day time (9-5) support at times they could not get into the unit because it had already gone offline by the time I executed their commands the night before for remote access and the point in time hey tried to remotely log into the device to respond to my emails with the latest changes I had performed. When they did connect they recommended deleting channel that only they could tell me did not have good reception even though I have 5 green lights showing on my app for the specific channel(s). At times I would go for a little longer period of time but ultimately would have the same offline status when I tried to watch a program. I changed cables, tried with and without line amplification, in addition to getting a more powerful antenna. Ultimately I would get the same result. By the way, they never suggested that their physical unit might be bad. The bottom line message, if you have channels that might not always get good reception, it forces the device offline - not a good design in my opinion. Since I have to rely completely on their “expertise” I am finally at the point that I have to abandon this investment and not recommended it.
More specific details. Soon after installation I started having this device offline issue. After some further research (online and talking to the neighbor) I upgraded to the antenna to ANTOP AT-415B (which the neighbor recommended and uses for his Tablo OTA unit - which does not go offline for the same OTA channels). I still ran into the same offline issues and reached out to Tech support in July.
For a period of two months we tried to work through what was wrong. I tried various options they suggested. Since the support is only a day time (9-5) support at times they could not get into the unit because it had already gone offline by the time I executed their commands the night before for remote access and the point in time hey tried to remotely log into the device to respond to my emails with the latest changes I had performed. When they did connect they recommended deleting channel that only they could tell me did not have good reception even though I have 5 green lights showing on my app for the specific channel(s). At times I would go for a little longer period of time but ultimately would have the same offline status when I tried to watch a program. I changed cables, tried with and without line amplification, in addition to getting a more powerful antenna. Ultimately I would get the same result. By the way, they never suggested that their physical unit might be bad. The bottom line message, if you have channels that might not always get good reception, it forces the device offline - not a good design in my opinion. Since I have to rely completely on their “expertise” I am finally at the point that I have to abandon this investment and not recommended it.
October 7, 2019
I had high hopes for this device. But it constantly halts when streaming. This is a local network and the internet is not used. The local network is a new top of the line WiFi access point. So I do not understand why it can send video to my Roku. Perhaps the fault lies with Roku, but I would assume Tablo tested theses devices thoroughly.
The Roku application fails often and I have to reset it. The channel guide is marked as "beta" and makes many mistakes on schedules. And I have to pay for it. So it should be 100% reliable.
Sorry, this device is not ready for sale. I regret purchasing it.
The Roku application fails often and I have to reset it. The channel guide is marked as "beta" and makes many mistakes on schedules. And I have to pay for it. So it should be 100% reliable.
Sorry, this device is not ready for sale. I regret purchasing it.
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