I’m getting ready to set up my ota system and have decided that Tablo is the brand I will get. Now I just need to figure out whether to get the quad or the new dual hdmi. I will be using Apple TV . Will I get a better picture with the quad through WiFi or direct with the hdmi. Internal or external drive for the quad.
I’d get the “normal” network streaming Tablo in your case.
You’d want the direct to monitor HDMI model if you plan to switch inputs to the Tablo to navigate it (that is, not use Apple TV).
That’s an easy answer, the Tablo DUAL HDMI does not work with the Apple TV as the Apple TV device cannot playback MPEG2 video. Thus get the Tablo QUAD.
Which is actually the better picture. I can use the Apple TV independent of the tablo just like I do no with the Dvr from direct tv and access all my apps from the Apple TV. I just want to get the best picture I can. Thanks for the feed back
So you’re happy with accessing the DVR on only your one TV as you do with Dish right now? If so, go with the DUAL HDMI.
1 Like
Yea right now we just watch tv in the tv room. Seems to me that the mpeg2 would be better quality than the whole house through WiFi signal
Probably because of the data needed for MPEG2 it appears you only get 2 streams. Which is fine as long as the customer realizes it’s not record 2 plus watch multiple.
Concurrent Streams:
Watch or record up to two shows simultaneously.
Watch on your connected TV or up to two additional TVs via select Tablo apps.
Give that this may not be tuner dependent, for example with completed recordings, I’d want to clarify that with Tablo. I have a feeling it should be “and”.
With the new Tablo DUAL HDMI, how many simultaneous devices can be watched?
Watching on the connected TV is 1, and streaming to two additional TVs is 2. That’s a total of 3 devices. Watching on the HDMI connected TV doesn’t use the Ethernet or WiFi, so I’m thinking it should be 3 devices.
1 Like
This is a 2 tuner. So if you record using 2 tuners and watch already recorded shows on HDMI and 2 additional TV’s is the total 5 streams?
And the dual lite says:
Concurrent Streams:
Watch and record up to two shows simultaneously.
Watch on up to six devices at once.
Well in your calculation here it is still only 3 “streams” cause no one is actually watching the in progress recordings on the 2 tuners.
In the original OG tablo units the CPU was supplied by VIXS. VIXS was acquired by Pixelworks.
VIXS supplied all the OS, “stack” and API’s, etc. It’s the entity processing the tuners.
If I remember correctly the VIXS specification sheet use to quote the amount of work it’s OS/CPU could do based on the number of streams. And that included both the recording and playback.
Local playback of completed recordings shouldn’t use the CPU on the Tablo to qualify as “using a tuner”, it is streaming the already encoded h.264 video from your hard drive to a device such as a Roku or iPhone that is doing the decoding of the video.
It’s the OS/CPU processing of streams of data.
So unless there is some magic that causes the USB controller(and it’s bus) to directly process incoming requests from maybe a Roku player for HLS segments and pass them, maybe by some magic DMA mechanism, to the HDMI controller and it’s bus, I suspect the CPU would be involved in all of that processing.
Of course I read somewhere that a 4-tuner could only use 3 tuners when recording at the highest recording quality.
Following this same logic you proposed then if you’re recording using 2 tuners on the Dual Lite, and watching completed recordings on 6 TVs that is a total of “8 streams”.
Do you see why I said 3 instead of 5 now for the Tablo DUAL HDMI.
Somewhere in the forum there use to be questions about whether anyone has ever tried 6+2. No one answered that they had. And the I doubt that on the original OG 4-tuners anyone tried 6+4. They use to struggle at 4 recordings and 2 watching. Plus 6 viewing streams seemed to put the crunch on 100 Mbps and/or wIfI.
No one knows what CPU is currently being used. I seem to remember that 6 1/2 years ago it was a Cortex A53.
So give it a try and let us know.
Before we confuse anyone, I posted a link below to how the tuner math works for the Tablo units. And hopefully Tablo Support clarifies how the math works on the new DUAL HDMI.
Since the data is MPEG2 and transcoding isn’t exactly needed, there should be a lot less CPU required. Of course the amount of data being passed around is 2-3 times as much. And up to 18 Mbps per channel.
Because my 6 year old models refuse to die the newest tablo model I have is the dual 64. The flash on that unit would heat up to the point of melt down if I tried 6+2.
1 Like
Tuner math for the HDMI works the same as the other dual-tuner Tablos.
You need a tuner to watch live TV,
You need a tuner for an active recording.
You don’t need a tuner to watch a pre-recorded program.
The ‘up to two additional TVs’ is the equivalent of the ‘up to 6 devices’ for the networked DVRs. For live and recordings, you’re still limited to the number of tuners you have, but you can have a combo of live/recordings/pre-recorded content to make up to 6 streams (if your network can handle that).
Because the streams can be MUCH bigger than the networked DVRs, the average home network won’t be able to support the same number of concurrent streams from the HDMI.
Again, you’re still limited to the number of tuners you have but you can say, watch Live TV via the HDMI on your living room TV. Watch another live program on your Roku in the bedroom streaming from the HDMI, and if your network supports it, watch a third previously completed recording in the family room on your Fire TV.
2 Likes
Thanks for the clarification.
The specifications for the DUAL HDMI currently says:
Concurrent Streams:
Watch or record up to two shows simultaneously.
Watch on your connected TV or up to two additional TVs via select Tablo apps.
Shouldn’t it be “…and up to two additional TVs” then, not or?
I only have OG 2-tuners, which means older maxlinear chips, but here is an old question.
There use to be, on the forum, a user with RF knowledge and his question was about how many tuners were required for main channel and sub-channels.
His contention is that if an RF frequency has the main channel and 3 subchannels one tuner can handle all 4. Say I had an RF channel with 39-1, 39-2, 39-3, and 39-4. On my OG 2-tuner if I live played 39-1 I could also run around to 3 other devices and play 39-2,39-3, and 39-4. But as soon as I played a different channel, say 51-1, 39-2, 39-3, and 39-4 were kicked out of playing.