Tablo Dual LITE [TDNS2B-02-CN] Over-The-Air [OTA] Digital Video Recorder [DVR] - with WiFi, Live TV Streaming, Black

Two things have kept me from cutting the cord. Slow internet and we PVR everything. Well we finally got true high speed internet here on the farm and the Tablo takes care of the PVR issue. Bye bye Sat TV and all those useless channels we were force to pay for but never watched.My set up is a 2020 Newest Amplified HD Digital TV Indoor/Outdoor Antenna, KKUYI (50 kms from tower, thru thick trees), plugged into the Tablo, ethernet to a (5yr old) D-Link WiFi router, USB to a 1T WD hard drive, Wifi to a Roku Premier, HDMI to a 65" dumb TV. All but the TV bought from Amazon.ca. It all works fantastically.The Tablo was quick and easy to set up. The Tablo interface is similar to the Sat TV PVR so catching on to it was also quick and easy. If you want a 2 week channel guide instead of a 24 hour guide it will cost you $6 a month. If you want the commercial skip function its another $3 a month. The Tablo functions just fine without either of those so if you don't want/need those services you pay nothing extra.Note: I used a Chromecast between the Tablo and TV but the Roku is 100 times better in this application. You can even add the Tablo and Prime Video as channels to your Roku line up control everything via Roku. It works really slick. I highly recommend these components.

The Tablo is a little box with 2 or 4 TV tuners that pulls TV signals from a TV antenna and presents them to you for either (1) live viewing or (2) recording for later viewing.This particular unit, the Table Dual Lite, has two (2) tuners for recording and live viewing, and will allow for six (6) concurrent streams from recorded content.I think it is FANTASTIC.Yes, there some currently some mild issues with the iPhone and Android clients you can use to view Tablo content (a delay is require at startup to sync schedule data), but the Roku app doesn't require that, and if you use the app on a regular basis the delay is only a little bit annoying.One the app is ready to go, it's brilliant. It shows a fairly standard rectangular TV guide (24-hour guid is free, 14-day guide is $4.99/month), and the guide contains information about the show, the indivual episode, and when it first aired. Recording is fairly straightforward, and you can record individual episodes or entire series (all episodes or only new episodes), you can limit it to specific channels if you have dupes with different signal strengths or episode runs, and you can choose how many to save. You can add a hard drive (an external drive to this unit via a USB port) to save your recordings locally (I use a $60 2TB drive on each of my Table Dual Lite units), or you can choose to use Tablo's Cloud storage ($4.99/month for 64GB of space).One caveat ... the specific antenna you choose, and how you position it, can greatly influence your level of satisfaction with these boxes. Low or no signal means unhappiness. :(I live in an east-facing house in the western Atlanta suburbs, and most of the towers are between 15-20 miles away from me and between 90 degrees and 110 degrees according to tvfool.com. I've tried three different antennas myself, and each produced different results.The first was a flat antenna that I hung in an east-facing upstairs window, and it picked up 22 channels, but a couple of the key network channels I wanted were not coming in very clearly and would pixelate.The second antenna was another smaller but somehow better antenna that pulled in 43 channels, and it was mostly ok, but it make me realize that the specific antenna in use made a fairly large different even in the same location.So I picked up a third antenna ... a GE model 33692 attic antenna. After spending around 25 minutes to assemble that weird little bugger, I put it in the window. 73 channels. At least 50 of those are consistently solid. Whoa.My first Tablo Lite was very happy, but with only two tuners and lots of shows I wanted to record, I found that there were times when I couldn't watch TV because both tuners were busy recording Stuff I Really Needed, so I just picked up a second one from Table (refurb) just so I could guarantee a free tuner whenever I wanted. I used a splitter and a pair of 3-ft cables to connect both to the same GE antenna, and they seem to both pick up around 70 stations with very little loss compared to just one Tablo. So I'm very very happy.Note: I mainly watch TV these days using a projector and an Andriod box or Roku, so I am not really able to see a lot of artifacts in the signals due to an inherently crappy picture on my 100" screen, but I'm more interested in an immersive 480p screen than a smaller screen with 4K. :) Because of this, I can't really comment on quality except to say that I generally don't notice anything annoying in terms of image quality except few 480p stations (1080p and 720p stations apparently downscale quite smoothly on my projector). I have a new larger conventional TV arriving soon, so I can make some more meaningful comments at that point, but so far I'm very happy, especially with the main local network channels which are quite clear. Even when it's raining outside.

not working right in Canada, freezes up all the time, waste 0of money !Had this purchase last november and have been triyng to make it work since january, parked it for several months because it keeps freezing up on channels tried it again this month and still same issue.moved the antenna, installed it neat my WiFi router did all imaginable things to get it to work and it still wont!!!i need to kknow how to return this piece of crxp........ very frustrated with time wasted ...

Very difficult, frustrating wifi setup. Finally did what instructions said not to do (I put my phone in airplane mode and then turned on wifi. Finally connected and finished setup. Great device for using my Rokus to watch and record OTA channels. Seems to work fine so far. Test recording via wifi was fine. They need to create app so you can use laptop for setup. Having to use a phone wasn't great. But again finally figured it out.Two year update. I've lowered my original rating from 4 to 2 stars. My first experience with their customer service was very good but since then they have done nothing to fix the persistent issues with incorrect channel information in the guide. With my antenna hooked to my TV I get 53 channels. Hooked to the Tablo I get 48. The missing channels are ones I would like to see on the Tablo. There are still two channels that scan into the Tablo with no guide information. There are 6 others that have the wrong guide information and/or are not the channels they say they are. I've tried using other zip codes within the area. In fact if I use my own zip code it's much worse. In two years they have done nothing to improve the situation and now when I contact them they just say it will be fixed in future firmware updates but that never happens. I would NOT recommend the Tablo. Yes, it is the least expensive OTR DVR sort of. But you do have to purchase your own hard drive to add to it. To me the AirTV is a better value and has more features for the money and it works. I'm very disappointed in the Tablo.Update to original review: PLEASE DO NOT BUY THE TABLO. I've now had mine for a long time and the issues get worse instead of better. On my TV tuner I get several channels the Tablo doesn't pick up. I have numerous guide errors and missing guide data. I've contacted customer service. First time they helped and fixed some of the issues but they won't do this now. They just tell me they'll be fixed in figure firmware updates. Honestly? How hard could it be to be able to give the user the ability to unmatch and repair guide issues? And why are there channels with NO data? I get guide data on my TV tuner and they're all correct.

I've been "cutting the cord" for a while now. I got rid of cable a few years ago and got YouTube TV as a cheaper alternative. I also have a number of popular streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, etc). I should note that I would have those streaming services whether I had cable or not.Recently I started paying attention to what we were watching. Most of the content from YouTube TV could be found elsewhere - in services I already had - it was just more convenient to use YouTube TV. And, YouTube TV has a pretty nice DVR. What i couldn't get from subscriptions I already had was local TV programming.My first step in seeing if I could terminate YouTube TV was to see if I could get decent reception in my home. I got a Winegard FlatWave antennae and stuck it to my window then plugged it into a TV. I was very impressed with not only the number of channels (most were worthless) but the quality.That problem solved, I started looking for a DVR. After some research I wound up with this one. Installing it seemed like it was going to be a simple task but was a bit frustrating at first but it worked out.After attaching the antenna and starting the app on my phone I went into set up mode. The quick start guide told me to let the DVR look for wifi networks. Never happened. The app told me to temporarily hardwire the Tablo to my router and set up my wifi connection. I did that it and it worked out OK. But, I was told by the app that the software on the Tablo was very old and had to be updated. This was after it scanned for channels, and downloaded that day's guide. I went for the update and it re-scanned and then just froze. I quit and restarted the app, power cycled the Tablo and everything worked OK.I then went to my TV and installed the Tablo app on my Roku. No problems there at all. The picture quality was excellent and the guide was OK to use. Not great, but workable.Next up was the DVR. I attached a 4TB Western Digital storage device and Tablo formatted it. I payed around with the DVR, playback, scheduling, etc with no problems at all.After a week of using the Tablo and my streaming apps I've cancelled my YouTube TV subscription which was close to $70 per month with taxes/fees. I did have to spend close to $250 for the antenna, Tablo, and external storage so I really don't start saving any money for 3+ months but from then on I'm mostly getting what I had before, albeit not as easy to access. There are some networks that aren't available unless you have a cable or live TV subscription but such is life.