As we mentioned in today’s blog post, the Tablo team will be in Denver this week at the CEDIA Expo. At the show, we’ll be demoing something we’ve been tinkering with in the lab: cable card support within Tablo.
Yes, we have focused primarily on users who can obtain Over-the-Air HDTV signals from antennas. However, good OTA reception his can be problematic for some people based on geography or other factors. Many people have mentioned that they’d love to be a Tablo customer, but they just don’t get a great signal in their area.
If this is you, or someone you know, please leave a comment on this post. We’ll be using this demo and your responses here to gauge interest in a commercial version of Tablo with cable card support. If there is interest, we’ll work on moving forward with next steps.
So let us know - is Tablo with cable card support something you would buy?
Probably not, since I came to Tablo because I was cutting the cord. Now, having said that, if I were to go back to cable it makes Tablo an even better device
@Jestep - There ya go We’re really thinking this might be a good option for people who used Aereo because they weren’t able to get a good OTA signal. Still having to pay for cable isn’t ideal, but this would mean a consumer wouldn’t have to shell out for cable company set-top boxes on top of the content fees.
I've thought about what I might do if I had to go back to cable for some reason.
One of the things that makes this such a great idea is that the FCC is now allowing cable companies to encrypt ALL there signals. That means no more clear QAM which means you have to rent a cable box for every TV in the house. One Tablo box is a heck of a lot better than renting 2-3 cable boxes and/or DVRs.
Is the HomeRun Prime just a single tuner? That’s the only drawback I see. I wouldn’t need one since I get all my OTA signals well, but I agree with RFSox. Having one Tablo feed every TV in your house and record shows is something that the cable company can’t offer at a low price.
"HDHomeRun PRIME supports streaming access-controlled copy-freely channels to other DVR applications including MythTV. These are channels that you subscribe to, are encrypted on the cable system (access-controlled), and do not impose restriction on use inside the home (copy-freely)."
I am curious, with TWC they pretty much blocked everything from being copied from my Tivo, does this mean it wouldn’t help at all with this solution?
So how does that work exactly. Is the HomeRun a passthrough and the Tablo records the video? That means the feed would have to go through the ethernet? Curious.
Is the idea here that the tablo would communicate directly with the hdhr prime and act a scheduling agent / stream pass through / transcoding / recorder?
or should the pic above be
CC + HDHR Prime == CC + TabloTV
If i had to buy additional hardware outside of the tablotv device supporting CC im not so sure its as appealing to me personally. Now if tablotv is building CC into the product and making it able to accept CC And/Or OTA, then rock on!
@PiX64 - We haven’t decided on a specific approach yet. Now that we know it works, we’re just looking for feedback (and thanks for yours) before we decide to move forward.
i would be interested but the fact i would have to buy 2 devices is a turn off for me. Also this would only be of intrested if other features get added to tablo mainly remote viewing(roku), linking of multiple tuners from multiple locations, and surround sound.
@RFSox - Yes, so the HDHomeRun and cable card get the feed and pass it through Ethernet to Tablo for distribution.
So it wouldn’t matter how many tuners the HDHomeRun had? The Tablo would record the feed like it would an antenna hookup? So you’d still be able to access the 4 tuners in the tablo.
The whole point of going with Tablo (for me) was to stop paying for cable, getting a cable card defeats the purpose (even if it’s only an additional few bucks a month).
So, for me, I mostly likely wouldn’t go back to Cable TV. however, that being said If i did, I would certainly NOT go with a TSP (tv service provider… is that a thing? ) supplied STB. I would go with a HTPC solution, or better yet a single appliance that could sit on my network and do everything for me ala TabloTV with both OTA and CableCard support…
@RFSox - Yes, so the HDHomeRun and cable card get the feed and pass it through Ethernet to Tablo for distribution.
So it wouldn't matter how many tuners the HDHomeRun had? The Tablo would record the feed like it would an antenna hookup? So you'd still be able to access the 4 tuners in the tablo. </blockquote>
It does matter how many tuners the HomeRun has… We would in this case be able to use 3 of the 4 tuners available on the 4-Tuner Tablo.
“HDHomeRun PRIME supports streaming access-controlled copy-freely channels to other DVR applications including MythTV. These are channels that you subscribe to, are encrypted on the cable system (access-controlled), and do not impose restriction on use inside the home (copy-freely).”
I am curious, with TWC they pretty much blocked everything from being copied from my Tivo, does this mean it wouldn’t help at all with this solution?
We haven’t gotten far enough along the road to know exactly what would occur with access-controlled content. That’s in the next-step ‘to-do’ list as well.
We’re really thinking this might be a good option for people who used Aereo because they weren’t able to get a good OTA signal. Still having to pay for cable isn’t ideal, but this would mean a consumer wouldn’t have to shell out for cable company set-top boxes on top of the content fees.