Multiple Tablos and subscription

General Discussion
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I think I know the answer to these questions but I’d like to get conformation before I decide if I’m going with a Tablo/Fire TV setup or a Channel Master DVR+.


I think I’d like to get 2 Tablos and a lifetime subscription.  My understanding is that I only have to buy 1 lifetime subscription and that will cover both Tablos and also cover replacement Tablos that I buy in the future, correct?

Can I use multiple Tablos at the same time?  Why?  Because it would allow me to have more tuners, and more importantly, more storage space.  We like to record whole seasons of shows and watch them at a later date.  I might record 5 shows for myself through the season but only watch 3 of them and then the other 2 over the summer.

One last question, when recording a series can I tell it to pad the recording on both the start and ending times?  That’s another reason for needing more tuners.  In our BeyondTV setup we had 6 tuners and still came up short once in a while.
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Yes, you can buy 2 Tablos at the same time and just pay for one subscription.  It will also cover any Tablos bought in the future.


You can have both running on the same network, though both need their own antenna and hard drive (though you could split the antenna if you have a good enough signal).   Each client can switch between multiple Tablos.

Unfortunately, there is no way to pad start and end times without using a manual recording (which isn’t very hard to set up).  Live events and sports will automatically extend recordings by 50% if you have “extend live recordings” checked off, but that is a significant extention.
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  1. Yes, get two Quad tuners if you need more than 6 tuners. Tablo has said one subscription will cover up to 10 devices.

  2. While you can’t manually pad shows, all recordings go over by 5 minutes as long as the tuner is still available. So a 60 min show will record for 65 minutes.

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Extra 5 minutes on the end is all I would need.  Just like to start recordings 2 minutes early but missing the beginning if there is a timing issue isn’t nearly as bad as missing the end of a show.


Thanks for the quick responses!
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Thanks to @theuser86 for mentioning the 5 minutes extra time at the end.   


The ability to add minutes to the start and end time is an often requested feature, but it still may be a while before it gets implemented.
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