I’m not real thrilled with the video quality I’m seeing with my tablo. It appears to be noticeably degraded from the original ATSC signal. I can toggle between them and it’s pretty obvious. Not surprising when transcoding from 19.2mbps MPEG-2 down to a highly compressed 5mbps H.264 stream. I would really like the option to keep the original high bit rate MPEG-2 stream, or at least a higher bit rate H.264 stream of equal quality. This is particularly an issue for sports. Ideally it could be selected on a per-recording or series basis. I’m not worried about the HDD space requirements. As it is the Tablo is by necessity transcoding the incoming ATSC mpeg stream on the fly so it should be perfectly capable of saving the full stream and then only transcoding to H.264 where needed. Btw I’m quite certain the quality issues I’m observing are not OTA signal strength related, HDD related, or LAN related (as described in your video quality FAQ), and I’m quite sure I have the LAN and Wi-Fi bandwidth to go well above 5mbps. So…please add a full original quality recording/playback option.
@danwa - It’s odd that you’re seeing obvious video quality issues even at 1080. What hard drive are you using?
@danwa - When I setup my Tablo I chose 1080 for the default recording quality. I’m sure there is some difference between the quality that is broadcast and the quality that is streamed from the Tablo - but honestly I can’t see any difference. I’m using a wired connection.
I noticed some quality issues when I setup the Tablo to 720P and my Roku to 1080P (i.e. the Roku upconverts), which were not there once I set both to 720P.
@Max makes a great point regarding resolution on the Roku matching resolution on the Tablo. My Roku and Tablo were both set to 1080 and video quality is fine, but if I had problems I wouldn’t have even thought about matching the 2 devices. @TabloTV - you should do some testing with the Roku and come up with a best practice or something that can be added to the FAQ area. The Tablo box may inadvertently be blamed if video quality isn’t what it should be, when it may just be a simple setup issue.
Good to know guys - thanks for the info.
@TabloTV - my HDD is a Seagate GoFlex 2TB desktop hard drive with USB 3.0 interface (in USB 2.0 mode).
@danwa - What kind of quality issues are you seeing? There have been some video issues caused by certain desktop hard drives.