I first want to say that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, my TabloTV 4 tuner box. However, I am wondering if there is any work going on to build a better overall tuner? Meaning one that gets better reception. I have had some poor recent experience with my car stereo selection and its tuner reception. I have become recently aware that tuner quality can vary greatly not to mention newer technology pooping up every now and then that can improve something like reception. Yes of course your choice of HDTV antenna and the quality of your coax can make a great difference in your TV reception quality. But much like a stereo speaker system if you have the best audio device but are routing it through poor speakers then it will not sound as good as it can. So I ask Tablo, is there any work going on towards the next tuner that can help improve HDTV reception? Or all the work these days on the apps?
Thank you for making a great product that helped cut my TV bill over $100/month!
@kbace6 - We’re focusing on firwmare and app software at the moment vs. hardware development but when we did select the tuner for Tablo we did a significant amount of testing to make sure we picked the best one on the market that fit our requirements.
We’ve had a lot of comments over the years from customers about how our tuner is significantly better than the one in their name brand TV.
So your point here:
Is the key but there’s more to it than that as well.
On my extensive to-do list is a blog post about SNR (signal-to-noise ratio), the digital cliff effect and overdriving tuners. These are all pretty nerdy topics but are critical to understanding OTA signal quality.
If you do a search on the forum all of these topics have been addressed. Definitely worth the read.
Tuners are developed by chip\hardware companies such as LG and Samsung not Nuyvvo. Just like Intel and AMD develop and manufacture CPUs for Dell and Microsoft.
With ATSC 3.0 in the works, it seems like it would be wasted effort to continue to work on improving tuners using the soon to be obsolete ATSC 1.0 standard. When ATSC 3.0 takes effect, devices with the old tuners will need to be replaced anyway (or will need some sort of converter box). So as long as everything is working properly, this would be the least of my concerns until ATSC 3.0 comes into play.
I was ready to pull the trigger on a Tablo 4 tuner when one of the local stations in my area announced their launch of an ATSC 3.0 station. I hope we seee a new version soon because I am jonesing for that local UltraHD signal.