More tuners or processors in future Tablos?

I’m assuming that “tuner” is synonymous to a processor in the Tablo? Discounting the heat dissipation issues, ae there any plans to build future Tablo models with more powerful processors and/or more processors?

I’ve already run into the “all tuners busy” issue during prime time, and I know during idle times, the tuners/processors do other background tasks. So I’d imagine that stronger processors might be able to do some of those things faster as well as provide faster response to some of the interaction with display devices and remote controls.

As an aside, do you guys disclose technical specifications for the innards of the Tablos? I’d hate to have to tear one down just to find out what’s inside. Pictures would also be nice.

“Tuner” probably isn’t synonymous with processor. A tuner would just pick the specific frequency and pass it to a ADC (analog to digital converter) to extract the digital signal which passes it to a processor (could be the CPU, a GPU, or other dedicated microchip) for transcoding. (I’m just guessing here based on how the Hauppauge capture cards of the late 90’s early 2000’s worked.

The technology aside, I’m curious. Do you have a 4 tuner or a 2 tuner? Are you both recording and watching live at the same time? If you are both watching and recording maybe you could get 2 Tablo boxes and dedicate one to recording while keeping the other available for watching live TV. Not ideal, but it is an option.

Yes in this case we toss around “tuner” and processor synonymously…

While technically not the exact same thing, as you indicated, they work together and when one processor is needed for transcoding, the tuner associated with is also un-available.

http://www.maxlinear.com/maxlinear-mxl603-selected-by-nuvyyo-for-innovative-tablo-hdtv-atsc-broadcast-dvr/

There used to be a webpage with the disassembly, it appears to be down though Google still has some of it cached.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.superhac.com/tablo/

I’d like 8 tuners and 16 processors, so I can record 8 shows at once and also generate thumbnails for said show at the exact same time (or transcode for remote viewing, etc).

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Why should someone assume that a tuner is the same is a processor. The MxL603 appears to be a dual tuner. Each of it’s streams would pass into an individual demodulator.

The output would feed into either a vixs dual xcode 5500 or a quad xcode 5100.

The xcode cpu has it’s own capabilities and limits. If you jammed 3 MxL603 tuners(6 streams) and associated stream demodulator into a box, the 5100 could probable only handle 4 tuner streams.

Ha ha…

I just read something that fills me with dread (can’t link to it). Seems there might be new Tablos on the horizon, hence the general clearing-out prices we’re seeing on current models. The alternative reason for a fire sale is even worse to contemplate.

Still have some time to return mine to Amazon… Keeping the packaging materials. :slight_smile:

That makes a lot of sense. The regular price for the old and new are close and they both cover the same use cases.