a. Bought the first one on a big sale ($79).
b It appeared Tablo was making regular fixes to resolve the issues and was doing a good job of supporting the product. So I felt things would get better.
c. Bought the second unit based upon the fact that it was on a big sale ($79) and the previous comments in item b. above.
So I spent about $160 total. Would I do it again? I don’t know. I think I would probably go with the Silicon Dust 4K flex which gets much better reviews on Amazon: Tablo 3.3 rating versus SD 4k Flex 4.2 rating.
We’ve had our Gen4 since Sept 2023. Being an OG Tablo owner since May of 2015 I certainly was familiar with the product and wasn’t worried about the challenges of a new model. Bought it simply to have some fun in retirement. My wife is the main user of it now and records many shows every week day and a few on the weekends that we watch together, most of the time. We delete everything once watched so there has been no need for additional storage. Yes there have been issues but mostly just annoyances that we could get past. Currently it gives us very little trouble.
We only watch recordings with Tablo, never watch live TV so all “annoyances” have been with recordings. Maybe about 4 or 5 over the months but all seem to be fixed now.
Currently nothing new to report.
Outstanding? I’m really hoping they add recording episode info like descriptions and date first aired like the OG apps have. When you have multiple recordings for the same series it’s “annoying” to have to go to the internet to figure out what they are about when all you get is the episode number and a title.
I was hoping for a more in-depth review, but when I saw that the length was about 11 minutes, it was predictable that most of the video would be just a summary of features, and a couple minutes for maybe some comments. Like other reviews of Tablo, of similar length, that are already available on YT. That’s how it turned out. I already know what the features are, so I did not find AM’s review that interesting, less informative than his vids usually are. Personally I got more out of Lon’s review a while back and I bought Tablo on the basis of Lon’s review. The 20 minute review on YT @ Northcoaster Hobby was also informative.
AM responds to several commenters that the main challenges with making Tablo work properly are antenna, wifi, and your STB. That’s the subject matter I was hoping he’d go into in some depth in his review, but he didn’t. As well as head-on comparison to the competition. I’d like another video or two on those topics.
I LOVE MY NEW TABOL-so there naysayers!! I bought the new Tablo. It did not work on my 2017 very nice Samsung 65", curved, 4k tv, but I bought a G96 USB stick for the TV. After I logged onto Google, I could go to the app store and download either of the two Tablo apps (legacy versus 2024). Also, I have broadcasted my (android) screen display to the TV. I added a 4TB sata drive that works well. A 1 TB SSD did not work for me even though it formatted it and said it was ready. The main thing I use my cable TV provider is for local news. I use Netflix for much of the rest. I get something on the order of 115 channels, though not all are useful to me. Even remote areas (Sagle, ID gets stronger signals than Spokane, WA) can often get good reception with TV repeaters. I love old TV programs, and you can fast forward through commercials. In my opinion this is a great product. You can access TV guides for free on your computer for information that are easier to use than the built in one. Then you search your Tablo to record programs you want. Granted some of the old shows I like are only broadcast at 480i but many are 1080i, especially local TV like NBC, ABC, etc. Supposedly my TV upscales 1080i to 4k. I use an outdoor antenna because there is a large hill behind my house. New antennas often have signal reflectors that make them not so much of an eyesore as in the past. As an experiment, I put a large metal pan behind the antenna and it did not change the signal strength. My outdoor antenna is mounted on the side of my house where neighbors cannot see it, which fortunately worked well for me. I do not rotate my antenna as it is unnecessary for me. I have also found that antenna amplifiers may not help signal quality.
In my opinion, if you want/need to save money, this is a great alternative to cable TV; however, that is based on my tastes in TV. I like this product so much I bought a legacy version for another house to see if it has some features I might like. The new version seems to use a proprietary disk drive format. I have not tested whether or not I can back up up the hard drive with a standalone cloner.
I too am very satisfied with my Tablo. I did find that latency reduced when I connected both the Tablo and my Sony tv via Ethernet sharing a switch rather than over Wi-Fi. It records what I want it to and I haven’t had any glitches in weeks.
Welcome to the community! Glad you’re liking the Tablo - we’ve been using our 2-tuner OG since 2015 and haven’t had many issues. We bought the Gen4 device for the additional tuners, but we think the features and UI/UX on the Gen4 device falls short of the OG.
Although both TabloTV OG and Gen4 use the EXT4 Linux file system, the drives cannot be swapped between devices.