I’ve been absent from this board for a while, but I’m back with a few questions.
For some background, I was an early adopter of the Tablo Dual HDMI, and I’m very disappointed in that box. I’m thinking about moving to the Dual Lite and have a few questions:
Is the Dual Lite stable ? Is it free of the myriad of bugs and problems that the Dual HDMI has ?
Does the Dual Lite run the live TV screen quickly and efficiently ?
If I change to the Dual Lite can I move my current hard drive to the Dual Lite and will all my recording work on the Dual Lite.
The Dual Lite has the same firmware as all the network connected Tablos. It’s been a very stable product for over 6 years now. (though do some lookups for “weak signal”, which happens to some users on some stations).
Because the network connected Tablos transcode the TV stream before the user can see it, It will 5-8 seconds to tune to a channel that hasn’t been tuned. Switching between tuned channels is pretty much instant. Depending on what device you use, you will either have a 24 live tv guide or a week one (though all support 2 weeks of data with a subscription). I would say it is quick and efficient, understanding the channel tuning time.
Since the HDMI uses native recordings and the network Tablo uses transcoded recordings, you wouldn’t be able to use your recordings on the Dual Lite. You could reformat the drive and format it to be used with Dual Lite.
SnowCat, thanks for your reply. I have a few clarifications:
There is no way that the network connected Tablo’s use the same firmware as the HDMI units. The HDMI units get separate firmware updates. In fact we HDMI users haven’t seen a firmware update since August of 2021, and I doubt we will ever see another one.
I should have been clearer on this one. On the HDMI units it is very difficult to scan up and down the live TV grid. This screen is very buggy and can’t keep up as the user scrolls up and down. If one continues to scroll up or down the live TV grid without waiting for the Tablo to catch up a buffer overrun occurs and the unit reboots. That is a very frustrating “Feature” of the HDMI units.
Your description makes perfect sense to me, even though I wish it wasn’t so
Yes, the HDMI and the network connected Tablos (like the Dual Lite) have different firmware, and the network firmware updates are pretty regular (at least 2 a year).
I have never seen that live TV grid problem on my original 2-tuner or my Dual Lite. Though I do just have my HD channels in use (so I don’t have a huge number of channels in my guide). So you likely will be much happier with the Dual Lite.
When the ATSC 3.0 HDMI unit comes out, I will be getting one, so I am curious to see what issues HDMI units have. And you can certainly have both running in your home.
Ahh, we are on different wave lenghts. I was asking if the Dual Lite was stable relative to the HDMI which most certainly is not. I read your answer too quickly and thought you were saying that the Dual Lite had the same firmware as the HDMI. Sorry, my mistake.
