Costs, and what you actually get from the 180 is a main reason for me.
No subscription fees like the others (TiVo, Channel Master, Tablo, HDHomeRun, etc) and at $27 a tuner, for only OTA service (I’m not building a library of OTA commercial filled HiDef movies with these things) I can put up with occasional point and shoot errors ‘IF’ there even are any, by simply adding the blinders and placing them apart, or if needed … using cheap IR extension kits.
If I do that I am very confident that the stock weak IR system will not cross fire at all.
BUT, make no mistake … although the 180s have:
HDTV 1080p Digital Converter Box with Media Player Function, Dolby Digital and HDMI Out:
Converts ATSC broadcasts for TV, projector or monitor
USB falshdrive or HHD to 2TB
Supports MPEG-2/4, H.264/AVC, 1080p HD, MPEG-1
Analog pass-through
Channel 3/4 function
Favorite channel list
Parental control function
Auto tuning
Aspect ratios include auto, 16:9 pillar box, 16:9 pan G scan, 4:3 letter box, 4:3 pan G scan, 4:3 full, 16:9 widescreen
Closed caption support
Outputs: HDMI, composite, coaxial
They have their own set of funkiness.
The recording and other features are significantly more … “less than perfect” … in use than the Tablo.
For example …
The Fav list is by elimination of channels you don’t want.
The 7 day on screen guide is only for the channel you have selected, not a cable like guide, so I back it up with a TV guide (TitanTV) app on my mobile device/PC.
The recordings need to be renamed after you record them because they have a file name instead of the program name, and other funky things, as well as similar recording miss-fires as the Tablo, but IMHO more so than the Tablo.
But … Mediasonics/HomeWorks is very active with firmware updates, and has a very good/active forum for discussion of work-arounds and etc.
But I basically use it to record the national news and local news, as well as a few shows that I watch before I retire, or a game I might miss for whatever reasons, and to set up a night’s viewing schedule (you can select view or record, for once, daily or weekly) .
Having more than one will allow me to do all that while watching another program.
Also as far as whole house, @ $27 ea. I can have whole house ‘and’ have back up redundancy.
If one goes down I’m still up and running until I get a $27 replacement.
Yes, it is not near as slick as the much higher priced competition, but it works to provide a much better picture than the ones that use a Roku (or similar video constrained devices) because you can get an image that looks like a BluRay quality picture at each TV in your home that has an antenna lead (or just it’s own antenna) for $27 for each tuner you want at that TV up to as many tuners as your OTA signal strength will allow, and the 180 does that with digital audio to my TV’s and surround sound receivers, and I’ll not be out a lot of $ when I go to 4K viddy systems.
For my length of recordings I use a SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive and I can add up to a 2TB HD if I need that capacity … for some reason that I haven’t found yet.
BTW: Amazon has a very liberal return policy and at the price of a few trips to McDonalds, you can try it to see if it works for you before you dismiss it without ever having tried it.
If you do return it you will be out shipping, so about the price of a Big Mac.
All that said … if Tablo had an HDMI MPEG 2 output with 5.1 (or better) digital audio, I’d definitely prefer that … even if it added … say … “$27” more to the current Tablo 4 … but also with a path to 4k … please!
Yeah … that would be ‘totally’ ideal!