My Tablo pretty much works. Occasionally I lose my connection to it and have to restart it, but most of the time it works. So I have mostly been happy with it.
My biggest annoyance with Tablo is the big delay that is always experienced when switching channels. “Channel surfing” is impossible with Tablo because of it. Whatever the reason for the delay, it should be fixed. If the reason is that Tablo has to buffer some video so rewind works, then that is bogus. No one expects to be able to rewind immediately upon starting a new channel.
My brother has a Channel Master DVR. It is similar to the Tablo, except that it connects to the TV directly and the interface on his TV looks a lot like a traditional cable company interface. Like the Tablo it has external USB storage and his antenna plugs into the Channel Master. It is comparably priced and has similar features. It has no startup delay when switching to a new channel.
The main reason I chose the Tablo is that it is wireless. I needed to put my antenna up on the second floor to get all the channels and I didn’t want to run wires through the walls to bring the signal to my TV downstairs. Tablo has worked pretty well in my situation, but not being able to switch channels without a huge delay is very annoying.
The reason for the delay in starting live TV is indeed to create a recording buffer to enable pause and rewind. While this may not be needed immediately on start up, this is the point in time where those frames must be saved to enable the feature.
Some users who prefer to ‘channel surf’ or have immediate startup of live TV do split their antenna feed between Tablo and their TV. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like this is a possibility for you without additional cabling.
I understand why you compare Tablo to Channel Master, but they are actually very different devices and each have their strengths and weaknesses.
Channel Master is like a traditional Cable STB, except is uses OTA antenna as the input - but it is a ‘one box to one TV’ solution that directly feeds an OTA signal or recording to a single TV.
Tablo acts as a media server - encoding the OTA signal in a manner that allows a wide variety of media streamers to playback it’s signal/stream. It is the encoding of the raw OTA signal and the creation of a buffer (built up stream of encoded signal) that creates the live TV tuning delay. But because of how Tablo works, it allows you to watch it on multiple types of streamers (Roku, Fire TV, Android TV, Apple AirPlay, Chromecast) on multiple TVs at the same time, and to watch remotely outside of your home. Channel Master does none of that out of the box, cannot do multi-screen in home, and can only steam out of home with an expensive add on device.
Different products for different needs - choose which bests fits your needs.
I would not have purchased a Tablo if bringing the antenna cable directly to my TV (for live viewing) had been a feasible option.
I understand that the delay is “to create a recording buffer to enable pause and rewind.” What I don’t understand is why that buffer can’t be created simultaneously with my viewing a channel immediately when I go to it.
theuser86 & djont57: Even if splitting my OTA antenna were feasible (which it isn’t in my situation), that has the big disadvantage that you lose the ability to pause live TV. Channel Master can pause live TV without creating long delays. Why can’t the Tablo?
ChrisFix: I know that Channel Master is a different kind of product. All I’m concerned about is one of its features: enabling pausing and rewinding live TV without making the user sit through a long delay. The fact that it does that proves that it is technically feasible for a device comparable in price to the Tablo to have that feature. No one has yet adequately explained why the Tablo makes me wait.
I would not have purchased a Tablo if bringing the antenna cable directly to my TV (for live viewing) had been a feasible option.
I understand that the delay is "to create a recording buffer to enable pause and rewind." What I don't understand is why that buffer can't be created simultaneously with my viewing a channel immediately when I go to it. No one expects to be able to rewind to prior to when they start viewing a channel.
It is not just creating a buffer for FF/RW, it is creating a buffer for the ‘on-the-fly’ encoding from ATSC MPEG 2 to H.264. That doesn’t / can’t happen instantaneouly. Without the buffer, you won’t have smooth playback of the live TV stream. It’s not perfect, but it is what it is.
ChrisFix: I will not argue with the tautology “it is what it is.” What I want to know is why it isn’t something else.
Channel Master allows pausing and rewinding live TV without making the user wait 20 secs (or whatever it is). Maybe the Tablo can’t do that because its CPU is underpowered or it lacks fast enough memory. Maybe it’s because it has inferior software algorithms. No one has yet said “It is technically impossible.” If someone does say that, then I’m going to ask them to explain the existence of Channel Master.
@duanewilliams I think the thing to note here is the Tablo actually writes it to disk. The stream is then delivered via the disk information. This holds true for both Live TV and Recordings. So they cannot stream until there is enough data stored on the disk.
Now I am with you on the time. It takes too long and maybe they need to stream directly without writing the data to disk for Live TV. Not sure they are capable of doing this, but in that case it is something we live with.
Tivo writes to disk and sends the updates to HDMI also. However, Tablo was made as a streaming only device. Wether that is a good thing or not is for others to decide.
Alright, I will take a stab at this, and rely on my more technical friends here to correct me if I am wrong.
The Channel Master is simply passing through the signal it receives to the TV. If live TV is paused, it records in that format as well, and then plays it back in said format when TV is resumed. It can do this because as someone pointed out, the Channel Master is a one box to one TV solution. The Tablo has to be able to play on many different devices, including mobile ones. Therefore, the Tablo has to receive the signal from the antenna, then transcode it to a format that can be used by mobile/streaming devices before it can be played. There will naturally be some latency due to this. This is what the "buffer" is for, to transcode enough of a buffer that video playback can continue while transcoding continues in the background (and circle goes on and on).
Once the delay has passed, the Tablo still has to deal with the newly incoming signal the same as it dealt with the initial signal. It has to perform whatever transformations on the data are required and it has to write it to disk. In the meantime it is displaying the channel on my TV. So my question is, what does it have to do initially, when I first tune in a channel, that it isn’t doing all the time?
If it is streaming from disk, then all it has to get on disk before it starts streaming live TV to me is the very first video frame. Once it has that frame, it can start live streaming, and that doesn’t take 20 seconds. It seems clear to me that the process of putting data on disk can be done fast enough to enable live TV without pauses for buffering, because I never see such pauses while watching long stretches of live TV. What that suggests to me is that the buffer is not there to enable a smooth streaming, but simply to enable pause and rewind.
ChrisFix: I will not argue with the tautology "it is what it is." What I want to know is why it isn't something else.
Channel Master allows pausing and rewinding live TV without making the user wait 20 secs (or whatever it is). Maybe the Tablo can't do that because its CPU is underpowered or it lacks fast enough memory. Maybe it's because it has inferior software algorithms. No one has yet said "It is technically impossible." If someone does say that, then I'm going to ask them to explain the existence of Channel Master.
Channel Master and Tivo are recording OTA MPEG 2 straight to disk, not H.264 (MPEG 4), so there is no encoding step required. They both use separate products (Tivo Stream (built in to some Tivos now), SlingBox) to accomplish encoding to H.264 to enable streaming outside of the one TV HDMI connection. This results in the quick tuning times we associate with regular TV tuners, but limits what can be done with the recordings after that, such as playing back on a Roku 3 in another room with no physical connection to the Channel Master or Tivo.
CM and Tablo are simply different products. It isn’t that Tablo has some awful implementation of what they do - it is an implementation that allows many of the core features of Tablo to work, and one that isn’t required for the features provided by Channel Master or Tivo.
The tablo does not write to a single file. Each tv show is broken up into many small files. This is called HLS. It has to write the first segment or two to the hard drive then you can stream the files.
The channel master & other dvr’s just capture the mpeg2 stream and write to a single file. You can view the show immediately upon switching to the channel.
ChrisFix: no matter what Tablo is doing to the signal to get it on disk, it doesn’t take 20 secs. They are unnecessarily making me wait to see the first frame.
If Tablo were to let you go back to the channel menu while viewing a program, that might satisfy a lot of “channel surfing” needs. I think if they were to move the live viewing to the top right corner and let the guide be in the lower half with the highlighted show in the upper left window it would make a lot of people smile.
ChrisFix: no matter what Tablo is doing to the signal to get it on disk, it doesn't take 20 secs. They are unnecessarily making me wait to see the first frame.
If you say so…seems a bit conspiracy theory to me. Would love to see some emperical data on that.
Have you enabled Fast Startup in the Settings menu?
Throwing my .02 in here because what I read in the original post of this thread was that it takes too long to switch between channels. I've mentioned that same thing before. But, I'm not talking about randomly choosing a channel to watch. I'm talking about switching between 2 programs that each have a tuner already assigned. Why isn't there a quick way to go between programs? BTW, I do love my Tablo anyway.
ChrisFix: the “Enable fast Live TV startup” option is not available on my iPad.
I would probably run Tablo in Chrome on my Mac to get the fast startup option, but AirPlay streaming from my Mac to my HDTV doesn’t fill the TV display. I end up with a 1" border all around the image. Streaming from my iPad or from my iPhone fills the screen.
It takes me 1 sec or less to switch between two channels that are already tuned. Of course, it is using any app but the Roku. I am hoping the Roku will be the same with the new Roku interface.