So, now I have purchased a Toshiba <a rel=“nofollow” href=“mailto:Canvio…<a href=” profile="" jwhitesel"="" style=“box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(25, 145, 193); text-decoration: none; font-family: ‘Helvetica Neue’, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;”>@jwhitesel…is">Canvio…@jwhitesel…is this what the “C” was for? Got it on Amazon for $65.
These ones are confirmed good too! I’m going to start a thread that’s ‘share your hard drive make/model’ so we can make a more thorough list of ‘good’ options until we’re able to support larger sector sizes.
Tablo seems to working as expected with this new portable USB hard drive.
@jploggie - Glad to hear it!
I saw a comment earlier in this discussion about someone getting red exclamation points next to recordings. Ever since Sunday this week, all my recordings are showing up with a red exclamation point and the recording will not play. I can't find anything on this, what is needed to fix it?
@blotto13 Typically when I have seen this, it’s because of either a weak signal, or your hard drive might not be compatible. You could try to rescan your channels to make sure they are coming in green. Also, have a look at this thread for compatible hard drives
Lastly, have you tried a reset? There is a button on the back that you push once for a reset. It will go thru the boot process.
As far as I know, once a recording shows up with a red exclamation point, you are never able to watch as it is corrupted.
Thanks for the tips. I did a rescan of my channels and nothing shows up. So it’s either the tuner in the Tablo, the amp on my antenna, or a bad coax cable between the two.
@blotto13, I had that happen once where all I saw were my SD channels and no HD channels, and I just had to reset the Tablo (press the button on the back) to get them all again.
So make sure you do a reset if you haven’t already.
@Blotto13 - Definitely sounds like Tablo isn’t getting any signals. Send a note to support@tablotv.com and we’ll give you a hand troubleshooting.
I put together a breakdown of my first impressions… but the forum won’t let me post it. its saying its 16745 characters to long 
what you recommend Forum Moderator? 
@PiX65 thatsalotsa characters. :-)
@PiX65 - I’ve adjusted the character limit on posts. Let me know if it still doesn’t fit!
I am stealing @Max post organization cause I dig it.
First impressions: AMAZING! Coming from Simple.tv and before that SageTV for many years this product is head and shoulders above that of Simple.tv. There are def some things that need updating which I and others have suggested throughout the forum, but all in all WOW.
Appearance/sound
Small Form Factor
"Pretty"
QUIET!
Setup
Internet Connection: Comcast 50Mbps down 10 Mbps up
Internal Network: PFSense firewall/dhcpserver/router connected to a 24 port 1Gbps unmanaged switch
HDD: 2TB Toshiba Canvio
Clients: 2 x Roku 3 wired
2 x Roku 2 XS wired
1 x Roku 2 XS wireless
1 x chromecast
1 x iPad2
1 x Hisense Sero 7 Pro Android Tablet
1 x Google Nexus 5
1 x iPhone 5c
X x various macs/linux machines/no windows :-)
Setup of the device itself was extremely easy. Comparing it directly to its only competitor Simple.tv TabloTV wins HANDS DOWN. step through ui was intuitive, channel strength indicators were a welcome addition, scanning was fast, formatting was as expected, and all in all EASY! No "Techie experience" needed here for sure - Well done.
Tuners
I agree the tuners are very sensitive. Not quite as sensitive as a traditional Silicondust HDHomeRUN, but again head and shoulders above Simple.tv. Tuning is FAST. This is a great feature for me because I know there is a lot going on. Its not a matter of just tuning into a station. The Tablo has to prep the stream, start transcoding it into a format that Roku or other client can understand (I think pure OTA is uncompressed 1080i Mpeg2) and then deliver the stream.. Its very quick, and makes me very happy :-).
Computer Use
I primarily use Chrome on a Macbook Pro for my computer use. I really like the unified experience between all clients. Sure the roku isn't exactly the same but there are aspects that TabloTV pulls out of the other clients such as sorting and category names that really give it a unified experience across the board. I have not had any issues with Tablo on a computer neither at home nor remote via Tablo Connect.
Roku
The Roku app works very well for me and my family. My entire goal of getting rid of SageTV was that I wanted to have one unified box on every TV and not have to pay to run my powerhouse sagetv server. Call me lazy, call me a nit, whatever you want, but I hated having to switch between boxes constantly. Want to watch TV? ok, turn on the TV and the SageTV HD300. Want to watch Netflix? ok well turn off sage, change the input and pop on the Roku... it was just annoying all the time when I had to do it multiple times a day
The Roku interface all around for a first release is GREAT.
- LiveTV section - provides me the ability to see 8 or 9 channels at once with the show that is currently airing (sure the load time is a little slow sometimes but they are working on it). navigating up and down through the list is quick and snappy. Tuning live TV is fast (could be a little quicker, but again I understand the technical hurdles here) for me it has been 7 - 8 seconds
- TV Shows - This section is KEY. With Simple.tv there was absolutely NO way to use the roku as a true STB. you couldn't easily find shows to record, or recurring shows to setup recurring recordings. It was clunky, unintuitive and unusable. NOT the case with Tablo. We use this along with the sorting at the top of ALL section daily. Great addition here Tablo
- Movies / Sports - Same as above with TV Shows
- Recordings - Hands down the best I have seen to be able to navigate large amounts of shows. It follows the Amazon video method, but works very well and is implemented nicely. The ability to sort recordings and view epsiodes for a show by season is GREAT. I also LOVE that currently recording shows, show up in Live TV of course but they also show up in Recordings! This is an awesome feature and something I missed very much with Simple.tv.
- Scheduled - This is also a very welcomed feature for us. We like to be able to see what is coming up that day, as well as in the next few days and this view provides it very nicely. Uniformed and formatted the same as the rest of the sections on roku channel, and over all very nice!
- The Tablo NEVER fails! It make take some time to return info, but I have never had it FAIL with some silly communication issue and a message that makes no sense. Simple.tv did this regularly and it was very frustrating. Almost as if a timeout was reached and the timeout was set to 15 seconds or something like that.
- Picture Quality! WOW! I could never watch the few sports that I watch on Simple.tv It was grainy, and along the lines of about 480p - 720p sometimes. Movement was horrific and cause pixelation and bluring. I actually had to connect my antenna to all of my tvs so that in the event we had friends over that wanted to watch sports, I didn't have to mess around with the poor image quality of Simple.tv. Tablo on the other hand is incredible. I don't know what transcoder you are using, and what the settings are but whatever it is GREAT JOB! implementing
- FW/RW would be nice to see thumbs when doing so, but tricky to do.
Roku improvements - (I have posted many in the Help us shape the roadmap but here are a few)
- Show text on posters where the fanart is unavailable. Without this, it makes sections like Sports unusable. Seeing a big blue square on the screen does nothing for usability
- Upcoming recordings and currently recording, I would like to see an indicator on the fanart posters just like the Webui and Tablet/phone ui.
- More appropriately crafted messages to the user. For example when I am going to tune a show and there are two things recording, #1 i don't know that because there is no indicator on the live tv section #2 don't say unable to tune stream. Give me more. Tell me both tuners are in use recording xyz and abc, would you like to cancel a show and watch this instead or tune to a currently recording show" Something of that nature.
- Live TV Tuning - could have a few seconds shaved off and made to be more consistence. Possibly run some benchmarking and see where the real lag is. I have noticed if there is 1 recording and 1 free tuner to use, as well as my wife watching a recording, when I go into the live tv section and subsequently tune to a channel. the entire process can take 30 - 40 seconds. VERY long!
- Consider lazy loading things like fanart and even future airings. What I mean is if we look at TV Shows section. This is understandly a HUGE load on the tablo to return so much data. But maybe it makes sense to return results in batches and then populate the info in as it returns in subsequent loads. so load items 1 - 50 then 51 - 100 in an additional call. Of course there are pros and cons to this, but could potentially give the loading times a bit of a slash in overall time to execute.
- True EPG would also be great, but as I said before I am happy with the current setup and it is very usable.
- "Play on" feature implemented the way Plex Does. So this would be more for a web ui and tablet/phone ui but I would like the ability to use my phone or tablet to view everythign and then have the casting option to send the media I am watching or going to watch to a connected roku or chromecast. I know you all are working on iOS chromecast and improving Android chromecast, but the ability to send the HLS over to Roku would be icing on the cake.
- I mentioned messaging above, but I would also like to see Messaging about upcoming recordings that do not disrupt my currently viewing show. So If i am watching live tv, and the tuner I am using is needed to record, Tell me that but don't cancel my live stream to do it.
- Clock. I would really like to see the system clock on screen upper right hand corner as many other channels do. Minor yes but nice to have.
- Plex recently implemented a style of viewing content on the Roku which is also very nice and maybe something TabloTV should consider. It is available via the PlexTEST channel and changes the scrolling to only vertical. the way it works is they show you rows of shows but those shows are only 5 per row. so if you have 100 shows, you would have 20 rows. the beauty is I can see 10 shows at a time because only 2 rows are displayed on the TV at 1 time. When you scroll left and right it simply cycles the "currently selected" show to the next 1 of the 5 in the row. In my mind this emulates a true "Movie Wall" pretty slick and I have grown to like it a lot.
Smartphone Usage / TabloTV Connect
Worked both in-network and after it was paired.
I have only tested with a mac book pro when I had to make a trip into Chicago for Work, and my Nexus 5. Works GREAT, Tablo Connect was easy to setup IMO and works VERY well. It would be nice have a login/pass which would allow the device to pair remotely also, but the current setup is good and works well. The quality of content being streamed was very impressive. Of course this has a ton to do with upload speed of your network, connection over cell tower or other network you are connected to, the setting you have under tablo connect for the quality, etc. But for me, it was very impressive quality
iPad/Tablet
The iPad app is very well done and easy to use. I like the way everything is setup, and haven't come across any MAJOR or minor for that matter improvements I would like to see. I have seen many others posting improvements to it and the web ui, and I agree some of those would be nice, but not a deal breaker at all. I am genuinely happy with the app as it stands. Tuning is quick, skipping is quick, quality is perfect, metadata and fanart are awesome additions. LiveTV guide - I would really like to see the 14 days I have stored on my TabloTV rather than just 24 hrs. That is a bit annoying.
Wrap-Up
I am impressed and happy to be part of the TabloTV community. I think you all have a great product with some awesome things coming down the pipe. I am so impressed with TabloTV in fact that I have been trying to get more SageTV users I talk to outside of the forum on board. I am also working on brining more individuals friends/family on board as well.
The true marks in my mind of a great company are
- Involved Leadership
- Top Notch Customer Support
- Responsiveness
- Active Community
- And of course a great product.
GREAT JOB!
^:)^
Add to mine a true Android phone app and ios app. I do dig the fact that you allow mobile devices connecting to the webui to be sorta reformatted, but a true app would be ideal… I am of course not telling you anything you haven’t heard or don’t know
and no problem!
This is my second week and only second day with a Roku that could play the recordings.
If you want to skip the rest of
my review my summary is that Tablo is a very good Beta product. <o:p></o:p>
I gave it 4 starts because it handles my critical needs very well but still has a lot of little things they can do better. The good thing is that they are actively making better. I would definitely buy again.
I searched high and low to find an over the Air DVR. Looked at
Tivo- To high a monthly expense feels like cable.
MythTV- Sorry I’m not technical enough.
SimpleTV- Hit or miss on the reviews. I think they are getting better but then I found Tablo.
I only found 2 reviews on newegg at the time but both loved Tablo. I decided to take the risk and tried Tablo.
Newegg’s delivery was quicker than Amazon where I purchased the disk drive. Tablo was very good about answering questions prior to the buy and are still very good a few weeks later. My only issue with support is no quick start manual included with the Tablo. I purchased a Roku a few weeks later and what a difference as far as initial impression. With Roku no problem it took maybe 10 minutes to get installed. Yes Roku is much simpler of a product but that doesn’t excuse no guide shipped with system. My major problem with install was that I did not initially directly connect the Tablo to my router. If support had not told me the setup could be done wirelessly or they had included the setup diagram I later found on line the setup would have been no problem. Just so you know they do have support help but not after 5PM PST and not on the weekend. They did respond over email but it took hours. Which is one reason I call a beta product. Support time should cover the most likely setup times.
Here is how Tablo does on my list of critical things
Ability to get all my local channels. With the free antenna sent with my Tablo by newegg I was missing 3 channels. I replaced the newegg antenna and was able to get all my local channels. Here is one of the little things that they could fix the 3 new channels did not have any programming information. I thought I needed to somehow click on a get data button or something. I searched high and low and found no information on this. Sometime later the programming data started to show up. A message on screen or information on the website could have been helpful. The clarity of my Tablo is better than my cable.
Able to record- Yes I’ve seen no issues recording. The web app does however let you schedule more than 2 shows at the same time when I only have 2 turners. Here again is a reason for calling it a beta product. The ipad app does handle conflict resolution but not the web app. Recording might take some time getting use to since the live program guide only goes for 24 hours and only shows 3 channels at a time. The other interface for programming does have 14 days but it just shows you a picture of the show and you would have to hunt and peck to see what is playing on what day and at what time. It needs a better way to know what is available to record next Tuesday at 8 PM.
Able to get to TV- This is really good I can get recordings and live TV to my TV with my new Roku 3. I had a very old Roku that I had to upgrade. My old Roku had 64K in memory and you need one with 256K.
Able to record all new episodes of a show- So far so good. Has recorded everything as far as I can tell. It has not been over 2 weeks yet so I can’t tell if programs outside the 2 week window will have no issues.
Able to record 2 shows while watching a recording- Works great
Sharing capability for multiple users- Not yet supported. It doesn’t even show if you have watched a show. If you stop part way through a recording it goes back to the beginning and not where you left off.
Skipping commercials- it used skipping instead of fast forward. You can skip at a very fast rate but I’d only recommend to do so to get many minutes into show. I do like the counter with the fast forward it makes it easy to skip a desired number of minutes. It also can go forward with the right arrow (10 seconds per click on the Roku. They will be changing to 30 seconds to match the ipad app. I spend much less time skipping with Tablo than I did with cable.
Changing channel lag- I saw this on one of the reviews. I think they fixed this prior to my purchase.
I did the first review on NewEgg, though it shows Anonymous. I am a little surprised there aren’t more reviews there, but I am glad I could help, @a9erfan. You have a good review here as well.
My only issue with support is no quick start manual included with the Tablo.
@a9erfan - Every Tablo should include a quick start guide, sorry yours was missing one. We’ll be addressing this with our manufacturing team.
oh yeah i had forgotten to review mine i think. Will DEF do that!
Yes if you have not put a review on newegg definitely do. There are a lot of people out there frustrated with their current solution and would like to hear your story regardless if you like or do not like.
Alright, I got my Tablo today and so far I'm really liking it, very impressed with everything that it can do, even though I do not have an Android tablet or an iPad, I have still managed to enjoy the experience.
Basically I
have played with TabloTV through my Roku, my Windows Tablets and through my
Windows 8.1 PC, first impressions have been good, super impressed with the
speed, feature set and overall responsiveness of the device, I also like the
looks of the hardware, very sexy looking with a very small footprint, very
appealing to most people’s tastes.
The video quality is stunning! I can’t really tell the difference between watching directly from the antenna hooked up to my TV and when watching through the Tablo stream, good work Nuvyyo, you did a good job, really good!!
Particularly
I’m extremely pleased and overly impressed with the amount of channels that the
Tablo can pick up in my area, I couldn’t believe it while I watched it scan for
new channels, when it finished it had picked up 74 channels! Sure some of those
are crap channels and some are the same networks on different channels for
different areas, but still I’m very happy with the tuner this thing comes with,
a weak tuner it’s one of the major deal breakers for me when it comes to OTA DVRs as I have invested in a good OFF-AIR antenna and good cables etc.
However
there are few things which I immediately noticed in just a few hours of playing
with it that I think need improvement, however again, keep in mind I have
mainly watched on my TV through the Roku box, among those things I can
count the following:
1- ) No way
to record a live program while watching it.
2- ) I can’t (Never mind figured it out :-) )
find a way to delete recorded programs from the HDD, am I missing something?
3- ) No on
screen channel guide when watching LiveTV, having to go back to the guide to
switch channels is no fun and takes from the overall experience.
4- ) While
browsing through the LiveTV guide (This time on my PC using the Chrome browser)
I have noticed something very annoying, if you want to do a little channel surfing
and let’s say you click on a channel then press the back button to go back to
the Guide you are returned to the very top of the guide, that’s most likely
Channel 2, you must scroll down the page again to whatever area of the guide
you were before to able to tune to your next channel.
5- ) For some
reason, not all channels that I can watch on the PC or Windows Tablets are
available on the Roku app, I guess the Roku app still needs work, that’s a real
bummer as I plan to use it with the Roku the most.
6- ) Please add support for Windows 8.1/RT modern apps and Windows Phone if not much asking -) I knew this was not there but I keep hopes that at some point you will think about it.
7- ) Finally
but not least something I knew before hand, but I say again so that developers
don’t forget it J please create some
type of alternate authentication process (Not just pairing) so that TV can be
watched remotely without the remote device having to have been on the local
network at some point, this can be a deal breaker for many people and it’s
currently my biggest issue with the Tablo as I want to allow some family
members to watch overseas, do not remove the current pairing method though, it’s super easy for people, virtually it configures on its own but adding the alternate method is a most for people like me.
That’s it for
now, very happy with my purchase no buyer’s remorse at all, looking forward to
the improvements coming ‘cause I know they are.