Well… this morning all of the TiVo stuff got uninstalled and boxed up. Yesterday after dinner I went and bought 2 more Roku Streaming Stick Plus for the kitchen TV and guest room TV.
3 of the 4 TVs have antenna connected for live TV if we want or need to use it.
Wife asked why I was boxing the TiVos. I said, “What do you think I should do with them?” to which she responded, “throw them out”. 
This started out as just wanting to get out of the growing cable bill. We bought a Roku for the living room and got Philo TV on Roku for the HGTV, DIY, Food Network… stuff we actually watched. ($16 a month includes their cloud DVR) and just watched TV on the antenna. All the while keeping the TiVos alive as a backup plan in case this experiment didn’t work out.
The plan was to get a Tablo and see how it is. Was the interface ok? Was it responsive? Did it work?
After the first couple days, the wife asked for a Roku for the bedroom TV so she could use it there.
Done.
Yesterday she said, “I think it’s time to pull the TiVos and get Roku sticks for the other TVs. This Tablo thing is working fine.”
So… done! (saving about $140 a year in TiVo annual subscription costs)
I guess one could argue that we still need to see how this goes in the long term, but at some point you just have to decide.
We did.
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Could you compare the tuner performance between the Tablo and the Tivo? Knowing your location and current antenna, how did each perform?
The TiVo was quicker to switch channels when watching live TV. But it isn’t transcoding and is connected to a TV via HDMI.
A channel scan on the TiVo yielded the same results as a channel scan on the Tablo. Same channels. Some that TiVo found and added were in fact not watchable as they were weak. Tablo found those same channels. So in terms of how well each detects a signal I’d say they’re equal.
For reference these same channels are picked up in scans by my 2 Samsung TVs (newer) and a Sansui (kitchen) and an older Sylvania (guest room). So I can’t say that either is better or worse. They both seem on a par with every other device I have here against which to compare them.
I’m in 14132 zip code using a Clearstream 4 on a 20ft mast with a Juice pre-amp (80ft cable run to the wiring closet) and a distribution amp to split antenna 4-ways. I should be getting my new Antop 400BV Monday or Tuesday so we’ll see how that does vs the Clearstream.
Performance-wise, other than the difference in changing channels on live TV, they’re pretty equal. They both perform well. We’ve had the TiVos for probably 3 years. Maybe 4. Some of that time they had cable cards and we were on cable (not fun as with switched digital cable systems they also require a “tuning adapter” which would stop talking to the TiVo at least twice a week requiring everything to be rebooted in a certain order) and then we ditched cable, pulled the cable cards and tuning adapters and put them on antenna. Much better experience in that configuration.
Does that answer your question?
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