Multiple TV Question - Is Tablo worth it?

Many internet providers now have data limits for internet usage. Does Tablo use the internet to stream to your televisions or can you connect it directly to multiple TVs without having an internet connection? Can someone please explain how this works? As of right now Xfinity limits you to 1TB of internet per month, if you want to exceed that it’s $50/mo. I’m currently hovering around 800GB/mo. If Tablo streams through the internet I do not have any cost savings and actually my cost would increase due to dropping cable from my internet/cable bundle. Please let me know what you think. Thanks.

Just like your home has internal plumbing and also connects to the city sewer lines outside, there are two parts to your home’s network infrastructure:

The EXTERNAL internet (WAN) which you buy access to from your ISP
Your INTERNAL home network (LAN) which ferries data between devices in your home via your WiFi router

Tablo primarily uses your LAN or internal home network which doesn’t count against your bandwidth cap.

It only uses the external internet if you’re streaming from your Tablo while you’re away from home, to download guide data (approximately 10 MB/month/channel), and quarterly firmware updates.

More on this here:
https://www.tablotv.com/blog/cord-cutting-data-cap-tricks/

2 Likes

This is an excellent use-case for Tablo. I have a Tablo and an over-the-top cable service (PS Vue) that has some, but not all available, local programming. I don’t happen to have a data cap, but we sometimes have outages and slow service, and the Tablo works great without an always-on internet connection. There’s a lot of good programming available for free–so much so in fact that I often consider cancelling the PS Vue, but Hallmark channel is just too important right now :wink:

First, sorry for the thread hijack…

[quote=“dustinsc, post:3, topic:13549”]
Hallmark channel is just too important right now
[/quote]You may already know this but Hallmarkk has a stand alone streaming channel… I have had it for years under the old name (Feeln) but they recently changed to a full on Hallmark Channel and are actively increasing the titles…

If you want Hallmark Channel (the real deal, not their streaming service) plus HC M&M, we use Sling Orange + Lifestyle Extras. We used to use Feel’n, but changed to Sling TV because you get both channels, and they are the actual channels. $25/mos, which is “high” but I also get BBCA, ESPN, AMC, TNT, A&E, History, HGTV, Food, etc…

(now back to your regularly scheduled program)

TabloTV answered the question, but put in simple terms - Tablo will only increase your data usage an insignificant amount unless you use the remote viewing feature extensively.

Given you are using 800GB/month, if you only use Tablo at home then you probably won’t notice any increase in your monthly data usage at all.