Can Tablo tuners handle a troublesome station, compared to TiVo?

General Discussion
1

I’ve just spent about 4 months with a new OTA TiVo romeo, which could not receive the most important station 5 miles from my house (every other tuner in the house could). Apparently, it does not handle multipath very well.

After a lot of expense (new antenna) and dozens of hours of troubleshooting, it appears to be a design flaw. Amazon has kindly consented to take it back.

Now the question: Can the tuners in the Tablo handle troublesome signals? Anybody have experience with with both a Tivo (Romeo OTA) and Tablo? I could give you technical specs, but basically every TV (old and new) and HDHomerun tuners can render the station watchable, but the TiVo chokes with dropouts. What will happen with the Tablo?

Any help appreciated. Thanks in advance.

mjclifford

2

Anybody? I have a narrow window in which I can return a TiVo.

By the way, we just had and are having rain for several days, after 2 months of dry weather and the lousy TV reception. The reception now is crystal clear.

3

Clouds actually enhance reception, bright sunny days weaken it (especially when hot). Cloudy days are not good for evaluating signals since reception is at its strongest then.

In fact your reception should stay better from December through February. In that timeframe your DVR will show good reception. But that may be misleading as spring gives way to summer next year… So you should evaluate your “return window” in that context. By next summer you may hit the same problems if you retain your DVR.

Atmospheric conditions for signal transmission and reception changes with the seasons.

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@mjclifford - A clean OTA signal is crucial for all DVRs. While some error handling is built-in, most DVRs including Tablo must have a good signal to create a watchable recording.

5

Rain, moist air? Any chance you might have a funny cable connection? At least give every connection point a good wiggle?

There’s really no way of knowing Tablo will work where Tivo fails until you try it at your site. Every situation is unique.

6

Here’s an update. I returned the TiVo and installed back my homebrew DVR (which is based upon HDHomerun tuners). As I said before, every tuner and TV in the house can receive stations without problems. Only the TiVo balked.

I’ll look at Tablo at the beginning of the year.

Thanks,

mjclifford

7