It would be great to have a list of requests that we can "like", see if they are being implemented, have been implemented, impossible to do, etc.
32 pages of suggestions and answers are a bit much to weed through. If a suggestion isn't on the 1st couple of pages or the last couple of pages of the forum, it seems inevitable that the suggestion will get lost. Suggestions that I made yesterday are already on the 2nd to last page of this forum, seemingly doomed to go unacknowledged.
@OTASurfer, I looked at both your suggestions.
I want the Tablo to be the best OTA DVR on the market and nothing else. If I want to play other media files on my TV, I have lots of ways to do that.
I believe it’s already very very close to being that, if not already. They were gutsy, IMO, to get into this field when others failed after a while due to lack of demand. Maybe the others were before their time, and Tablo jumped into the pool at the best moment. I don’t know, but a few years ago you could find several decent OTA DVR options. Then back in about November/December 2013 I decided I wanted a DVR to replace the DVD recorder, getting tired of all the disks stacking up laying around and they were getting harder to find. The field had dwindled to 1 or 2 and those were very hard to find “out of stock”, “discontinued” etc. were key words. the trouble was almost all the others required satellite or cable or whatever, or some monthly subscription which my wife and I have always been VERY against. NEVER pay for free TV was out thing. And we don’t have time to watch enough TV to make it worth $30+ a month. Shoot, for that we could save up for a great trip or something cool, not sitting on a couch watching over-paid actors try to entertain us and paying into the system to feed them even more money.
November/December 2014 I try again. I still see Magnavox and some other name mentioned, but those were ghosts from times past - then I see a new kid on the block, a new name I’d not seen the year before. Tablo.
Tablo is our dream come true - a true no satellite, no cable, no subscription required way to RECORD TV we’d otherwise miss, or save shows for our old age (FAST approaching!
I’d been searching for over 2 years when I found Tablo, it’s just what the doctor ordered. I have several other ways to play my media…FireTV, Chromecast can cast my saved recordings from my PC to the TV, Bluray player found my media on my notebook before I even finished setting it up, smart TV, free media servers on cheap PCs, etc.
My guess is that some venture capital person joined with some genius or geniuses and Tablo was the result.
It is true that My TV, BluRay Player, Xbox, and PlayStation can all play media files on their own but every single one of them has their own set of issues and constraints as to what they can play. You also can’t play media from a centralized location on all devices in a house (unless you setup a server or nas with some type of DLNA/Plex server). What you end up with is lots of usb drives that have different movies or media on them. You also will have issues with sound/video formats that can be played on each device.
A low cost Plex server (that can handle at least one HD transcode) will cost about $250 (including some storage).
Given that, would you pay the cost of the Tablo (2 or 4 tuner) + $250??
I mean it’s a different class of machinery… a bit more than mere “appliance”.
Btw, you can take that $250 platform (likely with just 500G or so of storage) and add tuner cards to it at about $100 a tuner. Thus a 2 tuner homemade setup is roughly $450 USD minimum. You’d be responsible for build “correct” paths to guide data and making sense of it all with regards to scheduling, etc… and then the files would probably be mpeg2-ts… so a bit larger than what Tablo provides, but higher quality (but perhaps not so streamable across a net, something Plex-like could do live transcoding, but pretty inefficient really).
So… let’s say a company like Nuvyyo makes such a device for $500 base (2 tuner, $700 4 tuner) or so with 500G of total storage (probably 400G or so usable) + subscription fees… the question is… would you buy it?? Such a device would be expandable (likely) storage wise as well. You might be able to trim the cost by limiting the device in some way… (like expansion)… but I seriously doubt it. There are ceiling and floors with regards to products. I can’t imagine doing it all for less than $500/700. Even then, margins could be tight.
(I am speaking from some experience on the matter)
I guess I’m curious what people are willing to pay… and again that $500/700 scenario will handle one live transcode to an end device. Price goes up significantly (e.g. 2x the price) for multiple live transcodes.
Something to think about. Feel free to share your pricing if you think you can build this for less (and $5 or $10 less doesn’t really count, I’m talking at least $50 less)… and remember your time counts as money (so masking my own silicon and fabbing wafers and flow soldering boards, etc…probably not possible)
I mean you can build a non-functional DLNA box maybe for less, but what’s the use if the content just isn’t practically streamable to your frontends? Things to think about.
I wonder, a P to V option for Tablo, run it as a virtual appliance on an ESXi host… naw, you’d still need an antenna input, bummer.
Hey cjcox,
@bluisana, my Plex PMS was bought (brand new) for $250 USD, and recently has been on sale for less than $200. It can handle doing one 1080p Blu-ray ripped to live transcode. Just really can’t handle more than that. Obviously for DVD rips, the system can handle 3 or more live transcodes if necessary. My $250 system uses a Sandy Bridge class Celeron. But same device has been onsale for less than $200 recently with the Ivy Bridge variant (a bit more horsepower).
It’s the very low wattage (well. about 30W) Lenovo Q190.
So… you can build a transcoding Plex server for <$250. Mine has 3 x 1TB USB powered drives hanging off it as well and has been in operation for almost a year.
IMO, the market for such a device is very limited. Joe Public (whom the majority of forumites here are NOT), is looking for a fire-and-forget solution for OTA TV. He’s not going to be concerned with ripping DVDs or Blu-Rays and consolidating the content onto a server. He’s concerned with lowering the costs of watching TV.
@GrantGood requests.
Question for you, what are the specs of this PC connected to your HDTV? Are you connected via HDMI? And what video card are you using?
Actually in my case it is for testing. So it is the original mpeg2-ts unencrypted bluray rip straight out of sly Fox. I can watch on my roku 3 or on my phone… trust me it is transcoding
IMO, the market for such a device is very limited. Joe Public (whom the majority of forumites here are NOT), is looking for a fire-and-forget solution for OTA TV. He's not going to be concerned with ripping DVDs or Blu-Rays and consolidating the content onto a server. He's concerned with lowering the costs of watching TV.The demographic of this forum is clearly skewed towards geeks who love to tinker :)
Hey, I resemble that remark!
I would like the ability to manage recordings better. If I have accumulated a large number of recordings, say a daily news show, I would like to select all or some of the recordings and delete them. Currently, I have to select each recorded show and delete one at a time. Even if I could only do this on the web interface, vs all the streamer interfaces, that would help. When deleting a scheduled series recording, I would like the option to remove all related recordings of that series.
Better delete functionality is an often requested feature here. The functionality is programmed into the Tablo, but not the interfaces yet.
Will there be any potential for a cable box grid style guide when selecting live stations? My wife would like to see the shows coming up next as well as the current show when changing channels. Some guide that better references current and near future listings would be helpful. I apologize if I've missed a similar request.
I'd like to add my thanks. We installed the Tablo, an additional Roku 3 to run through my Yamaha RX-V667 receiver into the primary TV, as well as the hard drive and a flat antenna. I'm in Indianapolis and pull all the local stations I wanted without difficulty, even though my antenna is aimed through our window at the neighbors brick wall. I waited for the Tablo because I wanted a one antenna/multiple TV solution that didn't involve additional cabling. I already had media players on each TV. I also wanted a network accessible DVR functionality. Tablo basically came along and met my exact need, and that doesn't happen often.
I'm switching to Roku from the old Google TV Sony box, which has been beloved, and would remain active if I could natively access Hulu though it. I know about the Playon workaround, but find it too much work and additional cost for the results. Still gripes me that Hulu is available on Chromecast, but still blocked on GTV. It's out of development and no longer a threat to their business model.
I'm on a week long spousal acceptance trial. A harmony remote may overcome any remaining objections from my sweet babu.
Hi @shabu - I guess you missed this: https://www.tablotv.com/blog/sneak-peek-new-roku-channel-amazon-fire-android/
Looks great. How soon will we see it?
@HarryR - Coming soon! Just working out the last few kinks in QA then on to Beta :D
Beta, beta, beta! I smell BETA!!!