New Year, New Tablo DVR (& Commercial Skip!)

You would think it would be easy to actually count the number of ventilation holes. If one thinks it’s going to run too hot then they have the option of using an external drive.

Plus the square fan whole with external screws should allow anyone with concerns to attach their own fan.

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This is why I wanted internal 3.5” drives. 4TB for $100 CAD - good deal for us Canadians.

https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_1086_210_212&item_id=091921&sid=iqjc0qv1paf2e07h3ngpg0icm1

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Well… this just happened! :star_struck:

“…what made (Tablo) really shine at CES was a smart new ad-skipping feature… It’s a lot smarter than what some of Tablo’s competitors are offering, and made even some of the new software features from major TV manufacturers look a bit dated.”

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Mic drop… bam. :slight_smile:

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Can you both an internal and external drive at the same time?
Is there any size limit on the internal SATA drive?

Doesn’t the front of this thread contain a link to the device specifications?

               ****************************CONGRATS******************************

Tablo Quad 4-tuner DVR

Tablo has been making networked DVRs for years, offering cord cutters an easy way to record broadcast television and then stream it to a wide variety of mobile and TV-connected devices. At CES, the company showed off its latest addition: A 4-tuner device that allows consumers to record up to four shows at the same time and that offers state-of-the-art networking for buffer-free TV fun.

On the surface, the Quad may just look like a revamped version of an existing product. But what made the device really shine at CES was a smart new ad-skipping feature that uses cloud-based video analysis to jump over those ad breaks without altering the actual source video. It’s a lot smarter than what some of Tablo’s competitors are offering, and made even some of the new software features from major TV manufacturers look a bit dated. Tablo’s Quad DVR will be available for $200 in March, and the company’s new ad-skipping feature will find its way to its other Tablo models in the coming months as well.

The specifications state…
Storage:
No storage included
Support for up to 8TB USB hard drive
OR
Up to 8TB internal 2.5" SATA drive

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Oh… and then this happened:

Tablo has long been one of the easiest (and most popular) ways to record over-the-air TV. The new Tablo Quad is an all-around improvement with four tuners, plus space inside the box for a 2.5-inch hard drive and is good for up to 8TB of storage. And coming later this year — automatic skipping of commercials. It’ll cost $199 when it ships this spring.

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Dusted off dropped mic, and dropped it again.
Theater major daugher cringes at the damage caused to the now useless mic.

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I have a theater major daughter as well, though she is studying the technical side. :slight_smile:

“How many people are actually recording 3 OTA programs while simultaneously watching a 4th?”

Well, I never EVER watch TV live. And why would you, outside of sports? I turn everything into on-demand.

And I have a couple of nights where I’m recording quite a bit of stuff–plenty of half hour and hour shows that overlap and end up using 4 tuners for a half hour or so.

I know someone who records every prime time show on every channel–because he can. He’s been doing this for 20 years, creating his own on-demand library. Back in the day, he did it on multiple ReplayTV units. When he traveled, he would take a few of them with him.

How many Tablo units does he own? 4x4 for 16 tuners maybe?

I have to say, nearly 20 years ago ReplayTV did commercial skip–and did so in real time. It made the markers while recording, so that you could start that hour long show 20 minutes in while it was recording and finish it at the top of the hour as the show was finishing recording, skipping commercials the entire time.

And it was WICKED accurate.

I’m struggling to understand why the world has gone so backward from that–why commercial skip today requires post-recording processing, especially in this day and age of hardware that’s far superior to what ReplayTV had way back when. I mean, 20 years–that’s an eternity in technology.

Today he does it with multiple 6 stream cableCARD tuners feeding a Windows Media Center system with huge hard drives.

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But it only worked for people from Boston.

I don’t know the answer, but it seems to me that once broadcasters realized that something could easily and wickedly accurately skip their commercials (the source of their revenue!) they would take steps to make that as difficult as possible. I would :slight_smile:

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It worked for everyone that well.

I’m both amazed and dismayed watching the world dump things that work well as it moves forward, in exchange for inferior technology. There’s no good reason that we’re still struggling to achieve what worked so well 20 years ago. It’s not as if we don’t know how to do it.

Make that THREE ‘best of CES’ mentions…

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I only wish the commercial skip also had the option to not generally turn it on for all recordings. But allow a user it selectively pick an episode and have only that episode processed.

I already have a number of shows, sporting events, and movies that put me to sleep while watching. Why waste cycles processing/removing commercials from those.