I checked your links - thanks for including them! (You can see my reply to adam1991 for my comments about time - it’s just been too hard to take the time to set things up the way I want for several years!) With something like capto and wrapto, I could easily automate a system to export programs from a Tablo to one of my computers. (I did see that capto, at least, works on a Mac, which is what I have.) I can easily write a program to compare what’s on the drive and what’s on the Tablo and keep them in sync every hour or two.
The easiest way, at that point, would be a program like VLC - I can just load up the playlist.
My first choice is usually to avoid proprietary solutions when I can. (If I had time to check out what I need for hardware and setup options, I’d probably get a box with a few hard drives and 4 tuners and set up a MythTV box - but there are advantages to something that’s already working - especially if the specs are open and you can do things like offload the programs.)
I was trying to get info on a TiVo forum to do that kind of thing with the TiVo, but I was only getting answers from one person and just could not get a direct answer on anything. I appreciated his help, but I couldn’t get the simple info I needed.