I agree with Daniel454 - wait for the new technology, it will be better longer. I have had a 2TB seagate passport on my Tablo for almost 5 yrs now and can’t seem to get it over 1.6TB of recordings. But 1.6TB of recordings is more than I could watch full time for a year. But we keep a lot of old shows (NYPD Blue, Rawhide, CSI, and a lot of old movies that we like to watch every 6-9 months. Can’t beat it, love Tablo.
Good points. In the end the cost is the same. All I do is put off spending $150 bucks.
I appreciate all the feedback. This is exactly what I was hoping for, some experience and some outside perspective. Thank you all.
I think probably waiting for the Quad is the smart play. There’s no urgency for me to have one immediately and no long term savings with the free guide year. And God forbid, the cost of a lifetime guide could even go up by next year.
So I wait a couple of months. I’ll have all the startup cord cutting gear paid off by then. And then get the Quad. That gives me time to decide on the drive too. I haven’t found anything internal bigger than 2TB. If I set it up with an external USB drive am I married to it? Or could I put in an internal drive later on if I wanted to?
And I’m not expecting a better tuner to amplify or work miracles with the signal. But I do have some on the cusp signal-wise that a good tuner locks onto and other tuners do not.
.
“This is OTA we’re talking about” seems a bit dismissive. There are different degrees of cord cutting… I’ve used OTA for 30+ years, with some 12-14 with DirecTV.
If I fire up a network app, generally I’m stuck with commercials, if I use NetFlix, Hulu or Prime I have superscription fees.
There are different perspectives. It’s more than just a novelty for many. Note, I do use subscriptions streaming services as well.
I was at first perplexed by his assertion of it limiting to 2TB as well but turns out the issue isn’t the 2.5" size, the Tablo Quad can handle up to 3.5", the issue is the depth, its limited to a 9.5mm thick drive so unless you go SSD, that limits you to 2TB right now…
Quad supports 2.5" hard drives only (internal)! This was posted by @TabloTV in another thread:
“And for those plotting purchases, we support both sizes of standard 2.5” SATA drives (7mm and 9.5mm)."
Another consideration might be ATSC 3. The transition won’t be as abrupt as it was when we switched from NTSC to ATSC, but eventually, we’ll all be forced to upgrade our Tablos anyway. The big advantage of Tablo over TiVo is our lifetime subscriptions are tied to us, not the device.
Well External USB Drives work Great. Particularly the old reliable worn-in drives. LOL! (see another thread if you must 
).
I bought the 4-Tuner Table a few weeks ago and couldn’t be happier (in comparison to my previous HDHomerun / Win7 Media Center setup).
Just upgraded my old, krappy, worn-in 360GB drive for a brand-spanking new 2TB WD Essentials. Love it!
- Free One Year Guide Subscription! Bonus!!
Personally, I think ATSC 3 is far enough out as to not really factor into the decision with a great deal of weight. But you’re right about the lifetime subscription. However I’m not looking forward to having to change out 4 TVS 
“And for those plotting purchases, we support both sizes of standard 2.5” SATA drives (7mm and 9.5mm)."
This was the issue. I could find 2.5" drives with capacity greater than 2TB but only in the 15mm height, and even then nothing approaching the 8TB theoretical limit.
And maybe I care too much about the theoretical and should focus on the practical.
Well I found an 8TB Seagate Expansion, USB 3.0 for $149. And as I said, it really isn’t an issue of clutter or outlets where I plan to place it. That might just be the thing to do and once it’s done I’ll probably never think about it again.
1 Like
It could take awhile but you will probably be thinking about it again.
When users have a drive that can contain 2,000 to 4,000 1 hour high definition recordings, they almost always want to save just one more recording.
Well, only if you are the type that never deletes email… LOL!
I’ve never had an issue even with a 500 GB storage for my video recordings…
But I also tend to keep my mailbox clean.
I keep may units clean. But you can find any number forum posts where fairly large disks fill up. Some users think tablo is a media server like Plex and not a DVR.
And thus one of the reason for the various rippers is to relocate all of these recordings on to a NAS.
We discussed the 4-Tuner vs the Quad and decided just to jump into the 4-Tuner. Our thought was if we cut the DirecTV now we save $140/month (we were paying $180, but now just paying Sling $40). If, in two months, there is a massive change in the Quad and we HAVE to have it we are still up on the game even if we bought both.
Worst case, we buy the Quad, clean off the 4 and pass along the 4 to a relative or neighbor. Best case, we have saved $280 in the meantime.
1 Like
“forced” might be speculative at this point, considering it’s completely voluntary for broadcaster to change over.
Weather or not it ever becomes a mandate is unclear. The two-way communication isn’t necessarily possible everywhere… even though all new tv’s will have 3.0 capability.
But still, it might be a something to consider:
Tablo Blog: What Cord Cutters Need to Know About ATSC 3.0 - Part 2
1 Like
Yeah…I’ll want a new one by then anyway.
Although tablo is not a media server like Plex, it is a media server. Tablo is more than a DVR, - it is a streaming device. By definition a media server is a device that simply stores and shares media.
You can probably find forum posts where users wanted to store media, created by devices other then tablo, and have the various tablo apps process it. That included all the extensions such as storing in their favorite format and transcoding on the fly to the desired target player,etc.
And tablo records in HLS format and thus all devices have to have players that support that format. A DVR is a streaming device. It’s just a matter of what pipe it uses to pumps the media down to the display device.
Not sure what you’re saying here.
Tablo is a DVR, not a streaming device. It captures OTA TV signals and stores the content.
It is able to deliver its content to streaming devices such as Roku and your app-equipped phone or tablet.
It serves a very particular sub-set of what you call “media”, so it would be a “media server” in a very narrow sense. But that’s not how we use the term “media server”, so it’s not a “media server”. A “media server” is used to describe, for example, Plex.