Own the old 4 Tuner Tablo? Will you buy Tablo QUAD Over-The-Air (OTA) DVR?

Is there enough value in the new Tablo QUAD Over-The-Air (OTA) DVR to make you upgrade from the original 4 Tuner model?

I am thinking yes. Not because of the commercial skip feature, but more so because I can have an internal HD drive up to 8 GB.

Also support for Gigabyte Ethernet.

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I have to agree, primarily because of the gig port. That alone makes it worth it to me. The hard drive is another. It’ll free some space on my desk! And open up a plug on my power strip.

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Yes, all around a beneficial upgrade, I will be selling the old model as soon as I get the new one.

price has never been mentioned?
Me, I’ve only owned a Dual Lite since Oct '18… So I can’t officially answer. If it’s been like maybe 5yrs and I felt the price was reasonable (that varies per individual) I would strongly consider due to the tech upgrades!! Personally I see the 10/100 USB 2.0 and lesser wifi specs to be dated.

disclaimer

I am not a devote tabloTV fan… I’m not a typical user (or really any demographic)
I use my own media player to stream recordings or export them to another system. All that aside, overall if asked I would recommend tablo to others.

Why the gigabit port? At the highest recording quality of 10 Mbps, and the maximum simultaneous streams of 6, a 100 Mbps port is more than enough to handle that bandwidth. The Ethernet port is not a bottleneck so upgrading will do nothing for you.

If the maximum simultaneous streams is still 6, there is no reason to upgrade to a gigabit port. However, if Tablo has said they are increasing the number of streams and you are actually going to have 7,8,9 or even 10 people watching your Tablo at once then yes it makes sense.

I agree though Wireless AC is great if you were having issues with running your Tablo wirelessly.

I was on the beta for the commercial skip and it works on the old 4 tuner hardware.

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As Canons900 mentioned, the internal HD also offers a benefit. Not sure if that alone justifies an upgrade.

However, there are those among us who upgrade just to have the latest tech even it does not make sense to more frugal users :nerd_face:

The old unit still has value, so selling it can offset, somewhat, the upgrade.

Right, forgot that is for all units, not just the new one…

Oh I agree with upgrading for the hell of it, I upgraded from an iPhone 7 Plus to iPhone XS Max just cause I wanted new tech. Sold the 7 Plus for $500 :smiley:

One fact that is hidden away is the Tablo QUAD has a new tuner in it which is better than the one in the OG Tablo 4 tuner. It’s the same tuner in the Tablo DUAL Lite.

What are the advantages of the new tuner?

I was under the impression the skipping isn’t done on the local hardware, that is, the data is uploaded and processing is cloud-based (not hardware dependent)

Some data is uploaded, but not the entire recording.

I have an OG 2-Tuner, and will probably upgrade to the new QUAD when it comes out. My 2-Tuner is sufficient most of the time but the schedules of some shows now end 1 minute later than usual (like 8:31) - which causes conflicts sometimes. The internal SATA option is nice too!

Regarding the tuner hardware as mentioned by @theuser86, here are links to the original Maxlinear press release in 2014 and the 2018 Maxlinear press release for the Tablo DUAL LITE.

Edit: updated broken 2014 link.

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Any idea what the SoC they’re using to get 4 streams? The Pixelworks one with the DUAL LITE is only for 2 streams.

I’m not sure it’s that’s straight forward, full-duplex and and all the network traffic… Not all the streams are likely to be wired (although possible). Once it gets to the router or switch… then a network engineer only knows.

You do make a valid point, there is little, if any true gain from a faster wired network port. Still, as with others -OCD- I just feel that much better about things… like upgrading for the sake of upgrading.

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This sounds great (IF I only knew what it meant - BUT makes me really want to upgrade):

The MxL69x is a single-chip, single-channel ATSC receiver that leverages MaxLinear’s “super radio” tuner technology and digital CMOS process technology in a low-power device that delivers superior over-the-air reception performance.

The MxL69x targets digital TV, single/multi-channel set-top boxes, USB/Wi-Fi adapters, and Wi-Fi/wired/RF smart antenna system applications. The IC supports both ATSC and global digital cable standards ITU-T J.83 Annexes (A, B, and C).

With its high level of integration, the MxL69x includes a broadband input filter, a channel filter, AGC, LO, PLL and demodulators, simplifying board-level design. The chip comes in a 5 x 5mm QFN package, enabling compact system designs, reduced BOM costs and lower power consumption.

Pixelworks XCode 5516 processor with advanced transcoding technology offers a compelling combination of product versatility and high-quality video output. More specifically, the XCode 5516 is capable of simultaneously transcoding two HD MPEG2 to H.264 video streams, while preserving the quality of the original video stream. Pixelworks’ advanced transcoding technology also includes adjustable bitrate streaming, enabling Tablo DVRs to deliver OTA video content in a format optimized for a broad array of mobile devices.

The Old specs:

The MxL603 is based on low-power 65-nm digital CMOS process technology. It delivers an unprecedented noise figure of 3.8 dB. The device also includes MaxLinear’s leading edge blocker immunity technology for advanced filtering of strong signals from adjacent channels. The superior phase noise performance provides assurance to system manufacturers that current products will meet future tuner specifications as they continue to evolve.

Additionally, the MxL603 provides market-leading low power consumption of approximately 350 milliwatts (mW) in digital terrestrial mode. The low power consumption and high level of integration enable low-cost, two-layer tuner-on-board implementations as well as ultra-small tuner modules without the need for expensive heat sinks or four-layer PCBs.

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This is more just wondering than really caring. When (if) I upload data to the storage cloud, the data is in my “private” area just for me. With this new technology, the data is uploaded, aka, distributed, to a third party for processing. Then sent back to me altered. Well, actually the original is still in tack, but the play-back itsn’t.
Sounds kinda screwy with copyright stuff.

The video is not “sent back to you”. You get back a playlist with the commercials marked. The scanned video frames are deleted from the server without retransmission.

Still don’t get what you’re pointing out - you just copied and pasted paragraphs from the links lol