Dolby 5.1

I want 5.1 AC3 as much as the next person so when I purchase my next AVR, my current one is just Stereo, it will work fine. But to say you were cheated is unreasonable. To be cheated would be Tablo proclaiming they had 5.1 audio output then when you purchased you got only Stereo audio.

Yes they do have better things to do. I think the new Roku UI and added Fire TV support trump the 5.1 audio feature. While that’s my opinion, the majority of Tablo users would likely agree on that.

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I bought it based on a feature they said would be there by year’s end.

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Can you provide a link to where Tablo promised the feature by year-end?

  1. It was an ETA, not a promise.
  2. Unlike many other companies they kept us in the loop and said after re-evaluation other features would take priority.

The timeline got bumped. That is par for the course in the tech world.

I am just letting you know that if you continue to make tech purchases based on features that do not yet exist, I can practically guarantee that you will continue to be disappointed.

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@philsoft

Well put.

@Scott_Curtis

The man has spoken and looks like 5.1 support has still taken a back burner to other more important features. See the TabloCEO post in this thread:

The OTA DVR landscape Is changing, Nuyvvo needs to as well

Those are all pretty basic too and I cannot fault them for fixing those rather glaring deficiencies. All I am looking for is some kind of recognition that lack of AC3 support is a problem and that it will be rectified in some sort of reasonable time frame. If they said they were going to fix it this year, I could live with that.

Spend some time on AVS Forums or other home theater sites and you will find that one of the biggest dings on Tablo is lack of AC3 support. Nobody who spends thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on a home theater system wants a stereo-only television solution. Name any major cable, satellite, broadcast or streaming service that does not support at least 5.1 these days. How many stereo-only streaming boxes, cable boxes, DVRs or Blu-Ray players are there? I would be very surprised if the answer was anything north of zero. This is not some obscure feature. This is extremely basic functionality.

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Oh gawd! AVS Forums! That place is full of lemmings. Things are so one sided and full of one upmanship. I have avoided those forums for years. because I can make my own decisions.

BTW Dolby Prologic II on Tablo right now is fine.

Once again my blood boils when I hear AVS Forums.

I like the AVS Forums, and have posted a lot about the Tablo on there. But anyone that has invested thousands of dollars of audio equipment is not likely to be a Tablo user. That is a like a movie star driving around in a Ford Focus. If money is no object, they likely have cable or satellite.

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For OTA - I’m content with 2 channel. If I wanted a movie sound experience, I’ll buy/rent the DVD for that show/movie and not use the Tablo. Perhaps it’s a matter of what I watch (mostly sitcoms) but I don’t think Big Bang Theory gains a whole lot from 5.1!

I know quite a few A/V enthusiasts who use OTA, though most use TiVo or an HTPC.

There are a lot of obnoxious people there. I’m a bit of a heretic, because I am less of a purist than a lot of those folks. One of the main reasons I adopted Tablo in the first place was so that I could use Roku as my sole source component for everything not on disc. I am heavily invested in UV and DMA titles (consumed via Vudu) and run Plex on a commercial grade NAS. My family also makes heavy use of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and a few other streaming services. This setup means that my family gets a single simple interface anywhere in the house and I don’t have to play tech support much. I like the appliance-like stability of the Tablo platform, I’m just frustrated with how slowly the enhancements are coming.

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How did you get that working? PCM stereo is the only thing being output to my amp from the Tablo App on Roku.

Dolby PLII works fine with my Tablo as well (via HDMI connected Roku to AVR). @luker does your AVR support PLII?

Just change it on your AVR! Should either be a button or a menu setting.

Yes and it displays on the fly what signal it is receiving. Which is PCM stereo for Tablo content, DD or DTS for my plex content, only Dolby PLII for Netflix since they updated that app to force DD+ which my amp can’t do.

You need to force it to Dolby PLII for the Tablo. That is how it works on mine, so at least you get center and surround information extraced from the 2.0 PCM signal.

Like @ John_Zanettos said, you need to manually select PLII for the Tablo stream - not allow the AVR to auto-select/switch.

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Will test, kind of blows to have to manually select though. None of my other content needs to do this.

Hopefully AC3 pass through comes some day.

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