Remote Connection without Pairing

I will be moving soon and I don’t want to drag my 60 inch tv from my old house to the new house just to repair to the Tablo. What’s the work around for this? How can I access my Tablo from my old house TV without having to repair? The Tablo will be moved to a new internet service provider.

So the Tablo is going to the new house? And the HDTV is staying at the old house?

Correct. It’s a second, summer, home

It’s Black Friday everything is on sale. Buy yourself a decent Fire TV Stick to pair. It’s probably just as powerful as your smart TV and weights much less.

Or if you have crappy wifi and the smart tv is wired I’m sure there are Roku’s on sale that have ethernet ports.

Well first of all, even if I pair it with a firestick right now and move the Tablo to a different Internet Service Provider, I will have to repair all my devices. That means, I have to transport the firestick with me (which I don’t even want to own, because I’m used to all my apps on my Roku TV [built in]). I don’t want to keep transporting fire sticks back and forth.

Also, what happens if I have to restart my Tablo for whatever reason (power outage, storage addition, etc.). I will lose Tablo connection at my first home. Again, I don’t want to transport devices to repair. Ideally, I just remote connect through my ID without having to repair.

Any ideas?

Your Roku TV will not work remotely with a Tablo using Tablo Connect. Roku devices are not supported.

So I see three possible solutions.

  1. Setup a VPN (virtual private network) between your two homes. That is the most stable solution, though there likely will be a recurring fee to do so. But it will make your homes appear to be on the same network.

  2. Follow @zippy advice and get FireStick or an Android device for your remote tv.

  3. Get a second Tablo for your 2nd home. That may not even be an option if you are dead set on watching stations that are only available at one location and want to watch the same recordings in both places. But if just want a DVR in each home, it is an idea.

No fees required for a VPN. It just takes a little setup time. It’s really the best currently available option overall for this scenario. I’ve been using a VPN with my Tablo instead of Tablo connect just because fewer open ports means slightly better security.

The biggest sticking point I see is whether you have the bandwidth to upload the video from the Tablo on the first network to the TV on the other network. If it’s just one stream and the network the Tablo is on isn’t overly congested it works just fine.

Check out your routers. One needs to be set up as VPN client and the other needs to be set up as a VPN server. The one that is a server will need dynamic DNS set up. One caveat is this will make all traffic go through the network running the VPN server. If that is a problem you could do a little more advanced work to refine your VPN setup but it may require more hardware.

Alternately you could turn the VPNs on only when you need it to pair devices when things occasionally get reset or when you get a new device.

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As stated above, no Roku device, even a Roku TV, supports Tablo Connect (aka remote viewing).

I watch remotely on my Roku using a VPN. You run a VPN server at the location where the Tablo is located, and you run a VPN client on a router at the remote location. This is of course all unsupported by Tablo.

Good luck!

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I have 2 residences and 2 Tablos. Each Tablo works very well in its own location, but I continually have problems with remote connect and pairing. One house is in FL and the other in NJ. I had one Firestick in NJ that worked fine with the FL Tablo, that is until I recently traveled to FL and returned. Then the stick no longer worked. On the most recent trip, I took two more Firesticks to FL and “paired” them, only to return to NJ and find that neither worked. Plus, my phone app stopped receiving the FL Tablo. I have the same problems in reverse. When remote connect is working, buffering is often a problem, even with quality settings at a minimum (500kbps).

I have routers in both locations set for static IP address for each Tablo, and ports forwarded as recommended. Troubleshooting is very difficult with the remote Tablo 1100 miles away.

It’s the local news shows that we want to watch remotely in both locations. For that reason I’m about to give up on Remote Access. The FL and NY stations have their own apps that give live local news. I’ve read the posts about a VPN and may try that in the future if my routers are capable.