Listener Review: Tablo TV

Robert Tarr contacted us recently and was excited about his purchase of his Tablo TV. We asked Robert if he wouldn't mind jotting down some thoughts on the device. The following is Robert's Review:

The Tablo TV,  http://www.tablotv.com , is one of a growing list of DVR devices for “cord cutters”, letting you watch or record OTA broadcasts and stream them back via your network/internet.  It does not have an HDMI out, so it streams both the live and recorded content to you. I have been using Windows 7 Media Center for a couple of years and like it a lot, but I was looking for something simpler. This looks to be a good candidate. While I can do a comparison to Media Center, I cannot compare it to Simple TV since I never got out of the starting gate with that. 

At this point my unit is running like a top, I’m using either the tablet app, my iPhone, Roku 3, or their internet access site to control the unit and watch the shows it has recorded. One piece of good news for those on a tight budget, you don’t actually have to pay for the program service if you are content to program recordings “manually”, meaning you put in the channels, and times to record instead of using their service’s program guide (like it was in the “good old” VCR days).  However, having a subscription to their programming service makes the whole experience much nicer and easier. 

Their user interface is very nicely designed, clean and easy to use.  It makes it easy to select shows for recording with a few taps/clicks and sort through your recordings to decide what to watch.  It does a great job of keeping the show’s information with each recording and groups series together under individual icons.  When you click on one of the icons for a series, it displays the recorded shows in order of season and episode, each recording has a short synopsis - very handy for picking the recordings you want to watch/keep.  Even my wife finds the unit well designed and easy to use (always a good thing to keep the “finance committee” happy). 

There are some tradeoffs compared to Media Center, like no HDMI out and no easy way to off-load the recordings for archiving, but so far I am very happy with the unit and would recommend it for others to consider as a simple way to “cut the cord”. Compared to Media Center, Tablo is easier to set up, requires less equipment, and is easier to access remotely. Additionally, it is cheaper if you consider you do not have to dedicate a computer to it.

Tablo TV requires an over the air (OTA) antenna and an external hard drive to set up. I used my old rooftop antenna (yes, there are still a few around) and a 1.5 TB USB 3.0 external hard drive with my 2-tuner model.  

Setup

Setup was a snap, just follow their simple directions to connect the Tablo unit to your network (hardwired Ethernet  is simpler than wireless).  Then, set up an account on Tablo’s website and register your unit to your account.  You can do all this using a tablet app (iOS or Android) or their web based app at http://my.tablotv.com/.  It is best to do this from the same network your Tablo is connected to and while the unit is on so the Tablo can “pair” to the viewing device.  It does take a while to format the attached hard drive, scan for stations and download the programming guide, so be patient.  I wasn’t and so had to do a little rework, but even that went well.

Performance

The unit can be programmed to record in three different resolutions SD, 720p and 1080p.  It can stream the recordings in speeds ranging from 500 Kbps to 4 Mbps, with an automatic setting to come soon.  They recommend using 720p and 1 Mbps, probably to ensure streaming without issues, especially with multiple viewers/streams.  With my local networked Tablo, viewed on my 42” Vizio TV via my Roku 3, there is a noticeable quality improvement going from 720p to 1080p recording, but only a small added improvement from 1 Mbps to 4 Mbps streaming.  I have only streamed via the internet across town to my iPhone and, as might be expected, 720p and 1 Mbps was fine.  It would be interesting to stream to a large screen using a Roku at a remote location to see if there are any internet streaming quality issues, but the Roku “channel” can only stream locally so far.  Alternately, it should be possible to stream remotely to a iPad and use an Apple TV to see it on a large screen, but I have not tried that yet.  With 720p recording I should get approximately 500 hours of recording time or, at 1080p, about 300 hours on my attached 1.5 TB drive.  After one week at 720p I have used less than 10% of my hard drive’s capacity, so I have plenty of room for my needs even at 1080p.

In summary for the Tablo TV:

Pros:

• Simple to set up and run, simple clean GUI interface
• Can stream to multiple users at different locations (subject to bandwidth limitations)
• Solid tuner (no dropouts so far)
• Relatively inexpensive (if you already have a streaming device and/or you use it without the programming guide)

Cons:

• No HDMI out for full 1080p minimally compressed video
• Must use a streaming device like Roku or iPad to Apple TV to watch on a large screen
• No ability to off load recordings for archiving
• No QAM tuner, so it can’t record your cable (but we are talking cable cutting here aren’t we)
• Programming is easy, but could use a few more features such as number of recordings to keep in a repeating series.
• Still new and developing, it remains to be seen whether intended improvements will be there in the future.