Tablo 4-Tuner Digital Video Recorder [DVR] for Over-The-Air [OTA] HDTV with Wi-Fi for LIVE TV Streaming

So here is my review of the Tablo 4 tuner DVR after using it for a couple of days. I may come back and update this review after using it longer, but as for now, I give this product 5 stars. That is not to say there aren't a couple of annoying things I hope get addressed by the developers. I do have one feature I have not been able to get to work yet, but as I have not spent more than about 30 minutes on it and have not yet contacted Tablo support, I am not going to ding the product on this feature, at least not yet. The feature I have not been able to get working is to access my Tablo when the client device is NOT on my network.INSTALLATIONUnlike some others, I found the installation to be extremely easy. Here are the steps I followed. After assembling the antenna (AntennasDirect ClearStream 2V), I first connected it directly to a TV to make sure I picked up plenty of channels, which I did. That way if I ran into no channels on the Tablo I would know the antenna was not the issue. I have not yet mounted the antenna outdoors as it is both cold and raining here in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. Even with the antenna indoors and the top of the antenna being at chest height, I am able to pick up 51 stations. After testing the antenna I hooked it up to the Tablo as well as the hard drive (Seagate Expansion 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive). I purchased this hard drive as it is one of the 2 drive lines recommended on the Tablo website. I noticed several people complaining about hard drive issues in reviews, so I made sure to purchase one that was Tablo approved. While I understand the point of view that any hard drive meeting the USB 2.0 specs should work, I was not going to sabotage this install for a $130, or less if I opted for a smaller capacity, hard drive. Even though the Tablo only uses up to 2TB currently, I'm hoping a future update will allow it to access additional space.I decided not to attempt WiFi during the initial part of the install. Instead, I opted to run a Cat-5 cable from my router to the Tablo. Upon powering up the Tablo, I used the Android client on my Samsung Galaxy S4 to access it. I easily connected to it and was informed there was a software update. I download the update, which processed quickly and rebooted the Tablo. When I reconnected I was told there was another Tablo update available and I applied it as well. Again, this process did not take long and it rebooted the Tablo and the end of the process. I then had the Tablo scan for channels and all found 51. I did override the suggested channels for the guide and added them all. I figure I can remove them later if needed.At this point I tested a live station on my phone and it worked great and was crystal clear! I already own a Roku 3 and an Amazon Fire TV box and had already downloaded the Tablo client on both of these prior to receiving my Tablo. I tested on the Roku 3 and everything worked great. The Amazon Fire TV box sort of worked, but when I went to Live TV once the progress bar completed, there was still nothing in the grid and there was a spinning arrow. I rebooted the Amazon TV box and had the same results. I had read in the reviews where one person said you had to change the settings of the Amazon Fire TV box to allow 3rd party downloads. I tried that and still had the same issue. I decided to try the brute force option and uninstalled the Tablo app from the Amazon Fire TV box and told it to delete from the cloud. Then I reinstalled it and everything worked perfectly! Awesome!Now I decided to get the WiFi set up on the Tablo. I disconnected the Cat-5 cable but could not see the Tablo_xxxx network as described in the instructions. I had read to have the WiFi work on the Tablo you could not have a network cable connected, so I figured since there was a cable connected when it booted, it must have the WiFi turned off. So I rebooted the Tablo without the Cat-5 cable connected and viola, I could see the Tablo_xxxx network from my Android phone. I was able to enter the wireless password for my network and everything works great! Note I do have a decent router (ASUS RT-AC68W dual band 802.11ac gigabit router) so I can't speak to anyone who is running a low-end router as to how the wireless performance would be. I cannot tell a difference from when the Tablo was wired to when I started running it from WiFiNow on all my tested client devices, the Tablo Live TV guide did have channels that were blocked out and had no data. I could not change to any of those stations. However I now believe the guide simply was not completely downloaded as the next morning all the channels had data in the grid on the Live TV screen and I am able to change to all channels.USING THE TABLOI have noticed the Amazon TV, Roku, and Android apps are a bit different with the Android & Amazon Fire TV apps having the most functionality and the Roku having the least. The all have access to Live TV, Recordings, Guide, and Scheduled. The Roku 3 does not have the Settings option but the Amazon TV and Android both do. I have ordered a Roku SE (they were only $25 the first day of sale) and assume it will work the same as the Roku 3.I have tested watching 3 different channels simultaneously from 3 different clients and all works fine. I also scheduled a show to record once in the middle of the night and that worked fine. I have set up the shows we watch on a regular basis to record New Episodes and some of those come on tonight, so time will tell how that works.Scrolling on my Android tablet is a little rough. Sometimes the response is delayed a lot. Sometimes the detail of the grid (the programs) move, but the stations on the left hand side do not. It eventually syncs back up but it is a bit frustrating to use.It seems I no longer have surround sound in the living room, even though my Roku 3 is connected to a 7.1 receiver via and HDMI cable. I do plan to research this as this could be a shortcoming of the Roku 3 or something else, and not the Tablo. I could be wrong, but it is my understanding if you are receiving a HD signal you should get the surround sound audio signal as well. As stated, I'll research this but feel free to comment on my review if you know the answer already.I did notice the stations came in MUCH clearer from the Tablo than when I had connected the same antenna directly to the TV (the TV nearest to the Tablo is an Emerson HD TV).ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENTHere at a few things I hope get addressed and features I would love to see added, in no particular order. Maybe some of these requests are there and I just haven't found them yet.* On occasion when picking a Live TV channel on the Roku 3, if you click the Watch button too quickly, the Tablo app will exit completely back to the Roku home screen. I found waiting until the background image displays before pressing Watch will take care of this.* I would be great to have the Live TV station currently being watched minimized while bringing up the guide.* No way to easily surf stations. You have to exit from what you are watching to get back to the Live TV grid. Even if you could just get text from the guide at the bottom of the live station you are currently watching and could then jump to that station without having to back out to the Live TV grid, move to the desired station, then drill down to Watch.* A screen that helps you aim your antenna. This may not be possible, but it would be awesome if you could enter your ZIP code or address and then a signal strength would be displayed on the screen to help you in aiming your antenna.* I've seen this request by others and the response from Tablo TV as to why they don't have it, but since Dish Network and others have this feature, it is obviously possible. I want to tell my scheduled recordings to start "x" minutes early and stop "y" minutes late. My Dish Network Hopper with 3 tuners can do this, so I know it is possible. If there is a conflict, simply tell the user and let them decide how to handle it.* The ability to move recorded programs to, for example, a Plex server. I believe there may be at least one 3rd party app that allows you to extract recordings from the Tablo.* Windows and Linux based clients. I would love top be able to have Tablo running on one screen while working on another.* The ability to backup and restore your schedule of programs to record. I have read some users mention the schedules have been blown away. It would be nice to simply restore a backup instead of having to manually rebuild.* Use more than 2TB of storage space* Bring down the price of the lifetime guide. a 30 month break even point seems a little long. $120, which would be a 24 month break even at the monthly pricing, seems more reasonable. I'll probably buy the 1 year guide subscription for $50 a day or two before my 30 days expires. Also, if I buy a subscriptions it should kick in once my free 30 days is over. The Tablo sites explicitly says your subscription starts immediately and you lose any days left on your free subscription.SUMMARYSo far I LOVE my Tablo set up. Since I want to be able to power multiple TV's and already own a Roku 3 and Amazon Fire TV box, the Tablo made lots of sense for me. That is not to say there aren't some issues and "missing" features. By "missing" I mean features I am used to with satellite and cable services I have had in the past. My experience so far has been extremely positive. I do want to get the feature working where I can access my Tablo when not at home. I also hope I can somehow get my surround sound back in the living room. From the reviews I have read, the Tablo development is very active and it gets better and better. I look forward to where it is heading.UPDATE 12/2/15So I am still very happy with the Tablo and plan to work on the access from outside my home network on Monday when I am off work during Tablo support hours. The one thing I have found is when using my Roku 3 it passes playing back recordings a bit too often to buffer. Watching a 1 hour episode it paused 4 times. Very aggravating! I have since moved my Amazon Fire TV box to the living room and the Roku 3 to one of the bedrooms. I have played back 2 recordings, each 1 hour long and did not experience a single buffering pause. I should be getting a Roku SE in today that I picked up the first day they were on sale for $25 and I am already regretting it. The Tablo implementation on the Roku is not as complete as on other devices I have tested and whether it is a Roku issue or Tablo app issue, the number of buffering pauses is, for me, a deal breaker for using the Roku. One of the responses to my review from Jerry says when he switched from the Roku to the Nexus player all the issues he was experiencing disappeared. Since those are available for $50 or less, if I replace the Roku's I have (the Roku 3 and Roku SE on its way), I'll give the Nexus play a try.UPDATE 12/3/15So I lowered my rating from a 5 to a 4 as there are simply some rough edges that need to be resolved to make this a 5 star product. I am already running the latest firmware version available at this time, 2.2.8. The Live TV guide is painfully slow to load and as your are scrolling down will pause while, I assume, it is loading more data. To work around this I was updating my channel list to drop some channels in which we have no interest, like shopping only channels. I was updating the channel list from my Amazon Fire TV box client. After hitting the Add Channels button (side note: this button should be named Update Channels as this is also how you delete channels) an error was displayed on the screen and the Tablo app was exited back to the main Amazon TV menu. I was not able to connect to the Tablo again even after rebooting the Amazon Fire TV box. In addition, NONE of my clients could connect to the Tablo (Android phone, Android tablet, and Roku 3). I had to power cycle the Tablo before my clients could connect. Even then the Amazon Fire TV box could not connect until I uninstalled and reinstalled the Tablo app.In addition, last night my wife was watching a recorded show from the Tablo and paused it for about 30 minutes. When she resumed playing, it had now sound. This was on the Amazon Fire TV box. I tried disconnecting from Tablo and reconnecting, but still no sound. I tried starting the show over instead of resuming, still no sound. I tried the Netflix app and it was fine. I wound up power cycling the Amazon Fire TV box and then the sound worked again.Someone in the Tablo support forums has used a phrase that I like and fear the Tablo will not pass if a little more polish is not applied. That phrase is the "wife acceptance factor". Currently the "wife acceptance factor" is running about 60% - 70%, and the reason it is that high is the money savings. While I am okay for now working through these issues, my wife's patience will not last long.

I have looked for a while for a whole-house DVR solution for over the air (OTA) HDTV. I have tried a couple of versions of the HDHomerun product and read everything I can about others like the Channelmaster DVR+, SimpleTV, and others.I believe that Tablo has the best feature set. The older HDHomerun devices I tried were not a self-contained system. There was no recording ability built-in. You needed a separate computer to record. I understand this is no longer the case, but too late, I’m a Tablo convert now!Reading about the Channelmaster DVR+, I could not see how to watch the recordings on another TV or tablet, at least not easily. It looks like a promising device except for that. I could be wrong but for the price it should include streaming to other devices.SimpleTV is getting very mixed reviews, to put it mildly. I decided to skip it. Tivo's guide pricing turned me off of their system--$15 a month for a guide???? If their pricing was more reasonable I would have gone that way.When Tablo was announced I was very interested. Self-contained system for recording, watching TV or recordings on PC's, MAcs, Roku, iPad, and Android tablets. Ability to watch on basically any device in your home, or even over the internet from a remote location.While Tablo does charge a fee for their guide service, it's optional. The system is still functional without it. You can set up manual recordings using time and channel number, just like the old VCR days. I subscribed to the service, I think it's worth the fee they charge but again, it's optional.I've been using the Tablo for a week now. The system is tucked into a spare room and hard-wired with an ethernet cable into my wifi router. I think that's an important factor for best performance. The more wifi connections in use, the slower they will be which can result in dropouts when viewing the streams. The main TV connects to the Tablo with a Roku 3 which connects to the nework with 5ghz 802.11n connection. No dropouts when watching Tablo or Netflix. Beautiful picture on my recordings, at least equal to my old Comcast DVR setup.The ability to watch live or recorded TV anywhere in the house on any device is very cool. My wife has an iPad and I have an Android tablet and both work great. We are saving a fair amount of money over our old Comcast setup, about $85 a month even after you factor in the $5 a month guide service (it's cheaper by the year) and $8 a month for Netflix.I'm now a cord-cutter and I'm happy to say the Tablo is everything I hoped for. It makes watching recordings anywhere in the house simple, and does not require a dedicated PC for transcoding and serving up streams. I have not had any problems with my Tablo rebooting or freezing or anything like that. I think having it hard-wired to the network is a big part of that.UPDATE: 10/22/2014 I've been using the Tablo for a month now. I'm still completely happy with it. I haven't had any problems at all after getting it set up. I did have a problem with the initial setup not working with the web app, so I completed it using the Android app which worked fine.It's very early days for Tablo still, and some people have reported some issues, such as failed recordings. I have not seen this. The most likely reasons are too many signal dropouts from the antenna, or a hard drive issue. Some folks are not happy with the Roku app. It's in a very early stage of development. Tablo has promised improvements and I think they will deliver but even as is the app is functional.The Tablo should be thought of as a network device, not so much an accessory for your TV. For best results it should be hard-wired to your router and have a solid antenna signal. You will then need a Roku 3 or equivalent to stream it to your TV. This works fantastically well in my setup. The Roku Stick is known to have weak wifi reception and may not work well.If you're looking for a straight DVR to connect directly to your TV like a traditional setup, you might be better off looking at the Channel Master DVR+ or Tivo Roamio OTA. Neither of those devices will match the flexibility of the Tablo out of the box though--The Tivo needs additional hardware to enable streaming, and the DVR+ can't stream at all, as I understand it. You gain a lot of flexibility if you let go of the 1980's VCR paradigm and embrace network devices like this.Update 1/5/2015: Still love the Tablo. Tablo just announced a preview of the new Roku channel at CES, can't wait! OK, here's the key to success, I'll repeat it again. Many of the bad reviews talk about wifi problems with the Tablo. Don't use wifi--Connect it directly to your router with an ethernet cable. Using wifi for the Tablo itself doubles your chances of having buffering/lost connections. I never have issues with buffering on any of my devices. FWIW: My setup is 5 GHz 802.11N. You mileage may vary if you use 2.4 GHz or G band wifi. Make sure you have enough wifi speed for streaming HD video. If you can't already stream HD video, you won't be able to stream Tablo either. It might be worth upgrading to an 802.11AC router, if you have a laptop or tablet that supports 802.11AC.Update 12/11/2015: ROKU updates have caused some issues. When fast forwarding thru commercials the Roku app can freeze occasionally requiring a reboot of the Roku. When this happens the Tablo is still working fine, I can connect to it with a tablet or PC and watch recordings. More frequently Roku would paused streaming and display "Loading, please wait" for 10 seconds. So following advice of others on the Tablo community forum, I purchased a Google Nexus Player on sale for $49. It works far better than the Roku for accessing the Tablo. Fast forwarding works incredibly well and starts up instantly. I still have a Roku in my bedroom so I'm hoping the Roku issue gets fixed. At this point it is uncertain whether the problem lies with Roku or Tablo. So, it you are considering getting the Tablo, at this point the Roku may not be the recommended streaming receiver. Make no mistake I still love the Tablo, just annoyed with the Roku issues. Right now the Nexus Player is working great in it's place.Update 12/17/2015--ROKU issue fixed. ROKU issued an emergency software update that was supposed to fix lockups in one of their apps. Well, guess what, it also fixed the lockups in the Tablo app. So the problem was on the Roku side as many of us have suspected. I have gone back to using Roku 3 instead of the Nexus player and it's working great again. So thanks to Roku for fixing this issue but no thanks to them for breaking it in the first place.Final Update 3/16/2017--This is my final update to this review; nothing has changed since the last update. Still using my Tablo every day and still love it. I still just have the 1TB WD portable drive mentioned in the comments below (I don't keep recordings after viewing them). So I've had this device almost 2.5 years and use it nearly every day. I record a lot of old movies, especially Sci-Fi from the Comet network. I will never go back to paying for cable TV. I also got rid of my Sling TV subscription. Anything I can't find OTA I stream from Amazon or Netflix.Edited 5/28/2018: I have deleted some of my negative comments about the HDHomerun system. My comments referred to the original HDHomeruns which required a separate PC to record. I don’t want to mislead anybody if HDHomerun is a good solution for you.Edit 9/11/2018: The last Tablo firmware upgraded added surround sound capability to the recordings. I do notice a difference on a lot of material. Tablo remains totally an “appliance”. I don’t have to mess with it at all, just record, and watch recordings as I wish.