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

That’s encouraging. Can you describe the glitches you were having? I have one channell, VHF physical channel 10, that pixelates with scene movement often. It’s 8 miles away, It’s seldom a problem with multiple brands of TV tuners in the house which are fed from an 8 way splitter. To dispel arguments about Tablo’s internal 4 way split, I’ve connected the antenna directly to the Tablo and still had the issue, which suggests to me, the old Tablo 4 tuner is not as robust as the internal TV tuners when dealing with poor signal quality.

I’ve been hoping the new Quad might resolve the issue, but I’ve been hesitant to order and try it. Maybe I’ll give it a shot if the Quad shows up at the local BestBuy making for an easy return if if the issue remains.

The glitches were typical pixelation and sound garbling and sometimes a skip of a second or two of programing. The 2 channels showed full green circles on the scan. So far with the Quad those two have been working fine.

Thanks for this!

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Thanks for your feedback nicholb. You’ve given me hope. The Tablo has been great except for this one pixelating channel (and sub-channels), whose antenna is on the same hilltop as the other 4 majors that come in great. All 5 channels have full green circles after a channel scan as well. The new Quad might help.

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Have you noticed if the app interfaces are faster on the new model? I would definitely upgrade if the Roku App was a bit more responsive on the new model. I’m wondering if the extra flash memory on the new model helps? The upgraded tuners sounds nice but probably not worth it for me as I already have strong signals. I’m still using an older Roku 3 and a 2 TB WD that’s probably several years old now. Does anyone have experience upgrading to newer Roku’s / faster hard drives and did either of these impact the Roku app performance or not really?

If you do upgrade please report back. I have the same issue with one station whose antenna broadcasts from the same spot as another one that comes in perfectly.

TVFOOL says this station has Co-channel interference (when two different transmitters are broadcasting on the same channel and interfere with each other.)

I am an owner of a pair of 4 tuner Tablo. I have had a fair share of issues. The function has been good enough to satisfy me until I have the time to work through them with tech support. I don’t think I need any more than what these offer in the way of functionality. I live in Phoenix which is scheduled to be a test city for ATSC 3.0 so until I need to upgrade for that I’m fine with what I have.

I just bought and set up a new Dual Lite Tablo and really like it. Was watching a Cord Cutter review of the new Quad unit the other day - which, other than number of tuners - seems to have very similar specs to the Dual Lite. On the video though, switching to and tuning in a new channel seem to be much faster on the quad than what I have experienced on the Dual light.

It’s not unacceptable on my Dual, but definitely not as fast as what showed on the Quad. Anyone with thoughts or similar experiences? Thanks.

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I have the Quad. None of these are really made for channel surfing. When switching to a new channel the Tablo has to begin transcoding the incoming signal and converting it to a file for streaming. So there is a delay when you switch channels.
If you’ve just fired it up and you tune a channel… you wait a few seconds.
Let’s say you’ve tuned channel 2.
Now you want to switch to channel 4… you wait a few seconds…
Nope…this isn’t what you wanted to watch. Back to channel 2… much faster change.
This is because one of the tuners had previously been tuned to channel 2. That affect lasts quite a while if nothing forces that tuner into doing other duty.

The advantage here on a 4 tuner is that you obviously have more tuners and if you jump around channels a bit there are more tuners to sort of… stay tuned to a channel.

But yes, there is a delay on the Quad too when tuning to a channel not previously tuned within the last hour or so. Going to a fresh channel (not already locked onto a tuner) the delay is like… 6 to 8 seconds maybe. Jumping between channels already tuned is like… 2 seconds maybe. Maybe less.

I’ve owned an original 4 tuner Tablo for over 4 years now.No current plans to buy the Quad, as my Tablo has been working great, other than a recent hard drive failure which was quickly replaced. If my Tablo were to fail, I’d definitely buy the Quad, or if ATSC 3 renders my current Tablo obsolete, replacing it with an ATSC tablo when it becomes available is my upgrade plan. Fortunately, my lifetime guide subscription is tied to me and not the hardware box, unlike that other company.

I guess the reviewer had previously surfed around among the channels, thus channel switching seemed to be faster than my experience due to the tuners being more or less preset to those channels.

Makes sense. Thanks for the response.

Yes, I just ordered a Tablo Quad from Amazon. Unfortunately I stopped using the older Tablo 4 tuner at our house 3 years ago and removed a second one from my father’s retirement community apartment about the same time as well.

The Tablo was useful but could be frustrating in practice. There were many things to like, but simple things like no static IP addressing which caused disconnection issues with the video output devices: FireTV and Nvidia Shield were headaches my father didn’t need. Cooling the device and it’s always on USB external hard drive were issues as well. I did like the guide and paid for a lifetime subscription.

Even though I shelved $600+ dollars of equipment (two Tablos, antennas and hard drives), I always wanted Tablo to succeed eventually. You had many good ideas, and it was clear to me the company was committed to serving it’s customers. Which is why I am willing in June 2019 to give Tablo another try, prompted also by the desire to archive some OTA content for personal use without having to laboriously copy it first to DVD.

Reviews of the new 2019 Tablo Quad are encouraging and indicate some of the problems I experience earlier have been addressed: internal SATA HD, stable connections to video output devices ( I really…, really hope that static IP addressing is available - yes some routers can assign IP’s linked to MAC addresses but that is a cludge). So tell the marketing dept to thank the Tablo engineers: I am willing to give Tablo another try and hopefully encourage my friends to try Tablo as well. Thank-you

This could be fixed by reserving the IP in your WiFi router. The Tablo would always get the same IP through DHCP then.

Will do! Nice to have you back :+1:

The problem with a static IP is if you give the device a static IP address that is in the DHCP range of your router and the Tablo goes down. Your router can give that IP address to another device on your network and then when the Tablo comes back up you’d have IP conflicts. In order to be sure your giving the Tablo an IP Address that’s not in the DHCP range you still need to go into your router or DHCP server and verify the DHCP range. Since you’re already going into the DHCP server you might as well reserve the IP Address for the Tablo. Reserving an IP address is the safest way to give a device a static IP Address as then your router will never assign that IP address to another device.

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If you have the guide subscription it should connect daily.

I’m getting ready to, or as we in the south say in a much more abbreviated fashion, “fixin to” add a second t.v. After a bit of researching, I was all ready to jump in on a Tablo light, however, I came up with two major concerns. The first of which was that I learned that when the signal is split to two tuners, some loss is inevitable. I live in a very fringe area, so, I originally thought that by going with a Tablo rather than a traditional splitter, I could avoid this loss altogether and simplify connections. In a traditional set up, one can amplify via a distribution amplifier that also serves as a splitter, but doing so adds noise, which can cause reception issues in itself, especially when combined with a pre amplifier which I must have. Splitting the traditional way induces loss regardless of whether or not both tuners are active or even if the splitter is connected to a second cable or t.v. Once the splitter is attached, the loss is induced. I thought originally that by going with Tablo, I could avoid this loss altogether, but upon researching, the loss is there but only when more than one tuner is actively employed and the Tablo itself is amplified which should help analogous to a tradtional amp. I contacted Tablo and I am very impressed by this company, their commitment and passion for their products and was put at ease regarding this issue by their response. The second issue, however, could not be overcome. The delay when switching channels. I actually saw this in a Youtube demonstration and if it weren’t for that, I probably would have unknowingly purchased one. I personally can’t live with that sort of channel lock delay and will go with a traditional splitter setup with two Roku t.v.s even though I am amazed with Tablo’s products, technologies, and the company. It’s just that channel surfing is how we are accustom to t.v. viewing, even more important to us than DVR functionality and multiple device functionality. Maybe after ATSC 3.0, I’ll look at Tablo again, but anything over a six or seven second delay for me switching channels, is just unaccpetable.

If you are willing to split anyway, why not split and feed the TV directly and then you watch the TV directly for your channel surfing needs? That would remove the delay. For me, the convenience trumps the delay.

I think that you are saying to use a splitter upstream of a Tablo; send one cable directly to the t.v. and the other to a Tablo. If so, that’s a good thought unless I have too much loss at the split. That would be a good compromise. I would have a Tablo for a 2nd t.v. and also to other devices. I say compromise, because the 2nd t.v. would be on the delay, but I could live with that.

Most of the delay is from transcoding from MPEG-2 to MP4. For an alternative solution, the HDHomeRun Connect Quatro might better suit your needs.