I recently replaced a TiVo Bolt with a new Tablo DUAL 128GB OTA DVR, but am a bit dismayed because text on both live tv and recordings is not at all smooth and looks ragged and blocky whether I’m watching on my LG OLED 55CXPUA or my 11" iPad Pro. The attached examples show it’s quite obvious. I’ve only found one reference from several years ago that says it may be due to the h.264 compression. I’d love further insight into the issue and whether it’s correctable. If not, I don’t think I can live with something so noticeable and may have to go back to the TiVo, even though I would really rather stick with Tablo.
Have you researched the Tablo DUAL HDMI? It connects directly to your TV, similar to most TiVO units, and streams the raw MPEG-2…
Tablo DUAL HDMI OTA DVR | Over The Air (OTA) DVR | Tablo (tablotv.com)
Keep in mind to stream to other devices in your home, as noted in that post, you would need an active guide subscription.
Here’s some info
Get the Tablo DUAL HDMI instead. No transcoding of video. Native MPEG2 video for live TV and recordings. No video compression ever.
I have tried all the available Recording Quality settings and the blocky text is the same on all of them.
Since I very rarely watch live TV, would this same problem exist with a Tablo DUAL HDMI OTA DVR? Is the raw MPEG-2 only available for streaming with that signal getting compressed for recordings on an attached USB hard drive?
Raw all day er’day. See my post above.
Thanks, @theuser86. That’s good to know.
The one thing that put me off the HDMI model before is that it’s not possible to use a Harmony remote control in place of the included remote. If that’s the case, I’ll need to weigh the tradeoffs.
You can also stream over your network to a Roku from your Tablo DUAL HDMI. You just need a valid paid subscription and a strong WiFi network.