My Tablo 4T and HDD arrived today so I couldn't wait to set it up. All plugged in now and still fiddling to get things right. A little disappointed with my reception from an older flat RCA antenna, but hopefully a better one will do the trick.
The one disappointment so far (and this is only after playing for an hour or so) is the Live TV. Even on the strongest signals I don't get consistent throughput. It plays for a minute or two on my PC, and then "pauses" with the little circle spinning for minutes ... never gets back to playing live after the initial 2 min. My Roku3 has a similar issue except it doesn't pause, it simply skips back to the beginning of the 2min cycle, over and over.
Anyway I'm still excited and hope I can get the kinks ironed out.
@RooiValk Your problems are probably related to weak OTA signal. I live way out in the boonies and had exactly those kind of issues until I upgraded the antenna.
Welcome aboard! I hope you’ll grow to love your Tablo like many of us do.
@ddd671, thanks. Busy looking for a good attic antenna now. Probably need omnidirectional since the local stations appear to be on opposite ends from me.
Well, UHF or VHF/UHF depends on your location. Where I am in Southern Ohio we have only UHF sources. The VHF stations are slowly going away, but some still exist. TVfool.com can help you figure out what’s available in your area.
An engineer friend of mine in Columbus, OH built his own Gray-Hoverman design out of copper foil tape, aluminum foil, and styrofoam building panels (like the kind used to insulate walls). He hung it in the attic and says it works amazingly well. I think he told me he had less than $25 in the antenna itself, and added a Winegard LNA-200 preamp. There are a bunch of design pages available on the Internet. Just do a Google search.
@ddd671, thanks. Busy looking for a good attic antenna now. Probably need omnidirectional since the local stations appear to be on opposite ends from me.
If you are ‘iffy’ with a flat antenna now, an attic antenna might only be a marginal improvement, if any. Outdoors is really the place to put an antenna. If you’re worried about the ‘look’, I would recommend something like the Mohu Sky 60, which is fairly small and can be painted (though don’t be fooled by the ‘60’… nothing this size will pick up from 60 miles away). Anyway, I’m about 28 miles from the TV towers (the Sky is about 10 feet off the ground) and get great reception except on one channel, and that one is mostly ok. Good luck.
I got my Tablo and 1 TB WD Elements HDD yesterday. I live about 20-25 miles from the “antenna farm” where almost all of the local OTA broadcast stations are. They are northwest of me so I put my $2 ten year old UHF bow tie antenna in an upstairs window that has a direct view to the antenna farm and connected it to my Tablo. (I love that I can put it anywhere.) It is in my home office so the Ethernet connection was convenient. I get ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, Movies! PBS, CW, and the Justice Network (murder porn) all perfectly with great reception and 80% of them in 720p or better. My mis-conception about OTA not having much to watch is gone, I can’t believe how much there is. I can now afford to keep Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and Netflix. Life is good! To find out where your broadcasting station transmitters are, use the FCC website link I have provided. It makes all the difference to have your antenna facing the right direction. https://stations.fcc.gov/find-station/
I use Apple TV… I was worried because AirPlay has been unreliable in the past but it has been working fine. Glad I got the 4 tuner … I have 37 recurring TV shows and 6 movies scheduled to record and ZERO conflicts.
Yes I have an iPad mini. I enjoy watching on the device because I can take it anywhere in the house and keeping watching while “taking care of business”, etc. LOL
I don’t watch them all, I was purposely trying to get a conflict and never got one. I’m leaving them until I decide which are my favorites. I just switched from Di$h network and have to find some new shows that I like to replace what I got used to watching on satellite. The biggest disappointment is that there are almost no live MLB games OTA this season. Can’t afford MLB at Bat Premium which is like $130 for the season to all the games except what is blacked out. I guess I’ll go to a sports bar and watch the commercials
Cost comparison (including taxes):
$324.74 - Tablo Device
$59.53 - WD Elements 1GB drive
$150.00 - Tablo Lifetime Guide Data
$000.00 - Antenna - Already had one
$534.27 - TOTAL startup costs
$44.52 - Startup costs per mo. for 1st year
$8.65 - Hulu Plus per mo.
$8.65 - Netflix per mo.
$10.83 - MLB Premium per mo. ($129.99/yr)
$72.65 TOTAL per mo. for the 1st year (with startup costs).
$28.13 TOTAL per mo. for the 2nd year and on.
The $72.65/mo. for the first year is still less than $80.00/mo. for Dish America Top 120, which is the cheapest package you can get with HD.
After the first year, I am saving $51.87/mo. and not really compromising my programming diversity.
If I wasn’t a big baseball fan or if MLB suddenly goes to an OTA TV network, I would save an extra $10.83/mo.
After looking at these figures and finding out that I had great OTA reception at my house, I made the jump to “cut the cord” two days ago.
37 TV Shows? How do you watch all of that in one week?
To answer your router question, it is from Time Warner Cable which I switched to from AT&T in January. It is an Arris DG1670. And I think your right about the router being the problem with the AirPlay because I think the problem stopped when I got this router. It is my first dual band router and my iPad and Apple TV both use the faster band now. My bandwidth is 50+ Mbps down and 5+ Mbps up. Google Fiber is coming to my neighborhood in Austin later this year and I will have 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps) WOW!
