Let’s say you want to record two or more TV programs and record the Super Bowl (long running thing that it is with live extension) at the same time. It’s at those times that 4 tuners is a nice thing to have.
We own 2 x 2-tuner Tablos. One is wired and one is WiFi. Due to limitations of our router, only one can be exposed for remote access.
Just to really get crazy, I also run Plex DVR, also exposed remotely. Sometimes I set things up to record in both places. Why? Because Plex DVR does record straight to mpeg2 and it has had commercial cutting. However, with Tablo’s new commercial skipping (very different) feature, the need for that might change.
We lean heaviest on the Tablo’s with a sort of “his” and “hers” setup… I don’t use the Plex DVR as much. But it is nice to have all the commercials removed from football games.
Of course, you are are all welcome to try the commercial cutting extract/transcode built-in to SurLaTablo (my own creation).
Cjcox… I can see that. But so few times a year. Regarding you exposing your tablo and plex externally, make sure you are just using an at home VPN server and don’t use port forwarding.
Enterprise data centers have all kinds of possible disk combinations. Often some 2.5 inch SSD’s are used for hot(performance critical) data requests while 3.5 inch disks store non mission critical data.
There use to be lots of companies in the generalized enterprise raid business. Not so much any more.
I would guess “No” on all of those. This is an improvement to the box design and the components, but the internal processing should be the same as all the others.
Everyone’s situation and viewing habits are different, I for one would buy a 6 tuner model in a heartbeat. 2 or 3 times a month I actually have to try to resolve a conflict where I have it set to record MORE than 4 things at once. Thankfully one of the shows is often on PBS and they will re-run the episode later in the night.
CW, PBS, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox … That’s 6 main networks right there and they are all putting their best shows on at the same time. Plus all the sub channels where the wife often will sit and watch some old rerun using a tuner I am trying to record a show on.
AND, when I travel, just watching a recording uses a tuner. No I cant use VPN and go full quality, my upload internet speed isnt anywhere near fast enough…
Bottom line, MANY need 4 or more tuners.
No reason to release a Tablo with 4K support yet since OTA doesn’t support it until ATSC 3.0 which is still new enough that tuners and decoding chips are still few and far between…
I too have had conflicts with only 4 tuners on OTA. It happens. It would be nice if there was a way to add to the tuner lineup vs having to have 2 dvrs.
“AND, when I travel, just watching a recording uses a tuner. No I cant use VPN and go full quality, my upload internet speed isnt anywhere near fast enough…”
how are you accessing your tablo remotely when traveling if your upload speed isnt good enough? VPN doesn’t throttle your speed, it just allows you to remotely access your Tablo without exposing a port to the entire internet via port forwarding
And I need to backtrack how i wrote that post because I do agree, everyones needs are different. So with that said, I wish there was an additional version that only had 2 tuners. And yeah the 4k support is probably not needed now either the more I’ve thought about it.
4K support may not be that significant. At a variety of professional media forums, TV professionals in the industry are saying that 4K may not be an important aspect of OTA transmission for ATSC 3.0. The channel repack has severely restricted and limited the OTA spectrum such that 4K may be more of a hindrance for stations. The betting is that most will stay at 1080 even though the ATSC 3.0 spec calls for 4K.
Even viewers having previewed 4K videos are hard pressed to see any great improvement over 1080. With channel sharing in the offing, the restrictions on bandwidth will become more pressing. Stations find it more profitable to subdivide their channels for sub-channel revenue rather than “improving” picture resolution. So 4K transmission in the future may not be that important. Other functions of ATSC 3.0 may be more significant.
Cable may get a 4K feed from a station but the station may continue to transmit OTA at 1080 depending on the bandwidth available (and its multiplexing of streams to maximize revenue).
I use Tablo connect, which yes, uses port forwarding but thats my only option.
Tablo connect uses the tuner to lower the video quality to something that my upload can handle. If I use VPN, the Tablo will see my connection as if I am local to it which means it will not kick in the transcoding of the video signal but rather try to supply it to me at full quality.
seems odd, 1080p requires at most 5mbps, not too many high speed ISPs have lower than 5mbps upload speed. but im sure you know your network better than i
I have Tablo Connect set at 1.5Mbps and though it takes a little while to get started, it works. Usually only watching it remotely on a small Tablet so the quality is good enough to get by.
Twice a week there are three shows in a 2 hour period that I want to record. In theory this could work with the 2-tuner that I currently have. Unfortunately, the stations have a bit of overlap in the end of one show and the start of the next. So, either I cut off the last minute (or first minute) of a show, or I need at least 3 tuners to record all three shows without missing anything.
I often record 3 and sometimes 4 channels at a time. Maybe I’m the outlier case, but for me, OTA is primarily how I watch TV, and I supplement that with streaming rather than the other way around. To be fair, I do a decent amount of streaming, but it’s not excessive. My data consumption averages 350-450 GB/month against a 1TB data cap, but my data usage includes web browsing, email, and music from SiriusXM and other services, as well as Hulu, Netflix and Philo.
Really looking forward to the new commercial skip feature… that is huge for me.
