Why would you do that - a second Tablo, no matter how discounted, is more expensive than a Fire Stick. Plus you have to set recordings on both Tablos, which means if you don’t rip your recordings off of the Tablo you have two databases of recordings, each only accessible when you are physically present. And you can’t watch your normal “home” channels, but only see those at the location where you are - in other words, it’s not “remote”, it’s local.
I have two Tablos, but I use the remote function when I want to watch what’s at home base.
Just checked: Currently a refurbished Fire Stick is just $25.
I run Tablo on an older Firestick at my vacation home (where the Tablo is), and I have really old Fire Box at home. So the obvious answer for me is to take my home Fire Box to the vacation home (I’ll be there for Thanksgiving), and pair it on the local network there. I’ll also do my iPad and my wife’s iPhone, just for good measure. And who knows, I may spring for new 4K Fire devices to better my performance, as theuser86 suggests. I have to keep things simple, because my wife is the principal TV watcher in our family. I’m an odd Tablo owner: I don’t personally watch any TV. Thanks for everyone who responded–that what makes this forum so great.
I assume you mean the gen 2 and not the new 4K fire TV stick?
You would have to ask someone who does a lot of remote viewing.
I’ve seen all the talk of using the high quality settings to ensure there is no transcoding. And some reference to viewing at least one recording to ensure proper pairing.
Someone was recently talking about how easy it was using remote viewing in Europe.
I prefer to use Roku stick with slingtv blue. and other Roku channels. I get enough local OTA at home. I need a little rehab when I travel.
If alien spacecraft land on my street and eat my neighbors I’m sure I’ll hear about when I get home.
First! I have some bad news about your neighbors . Just kidding
I would recommend to anyone setting it up test remote viewing before leaving their remote Tablo. You never know when you are going to have a port issue.
I also recommend setting up the Tablo with an assigned IP within the local network. If you set up port forwarding and the local IP changes due to a router reboot or a powe outage then port forwarding will stop working.
The Tablo doesn’t have the option that I saw but my router and I suspect many other routers allow you to designate a local static IP address based on the MAC address.
EDIT:. When I referred to testing the app itself on at least some platforms like Android and I assume IOS appears to check the ports and tell you if remote viewing should work. It’s near the checkbox that enables/disables the feature. I think that is sufficient unless you expect upstream bandwidth issues
There was some difficulty with the Fire 4K, which I think Tablo support found a work around for, but not sure.
I can guarantee that remote streaming on the 2nd generation Fire Stick works perfectly with modest upload/download speeds, recording on Tablo at 720-3 Mbps and live TV at 5 Mbps. I set remote streaming quality at 1 Mbps - 5 Mbps depending on the quality of the remote connection (this can be changed on the fly from Tablo settings at your remote location). This is all using the existing main Tablo Fire app, not the beta (which as noted doesn’t support remote viewing).
I have done this all over the world in private homes and hotels. Never had a problem or failiure. Opinions may vary but I don’t find the 2nd generation Fire Stick too sluggish, especially considering how long it takes Tablo to start playing (initial buffering). It’s certainly not lightening moving through the menus though. For me, the miracle of what it’s doing remotely is satisfying enough.
And again, it costs $25 right now.
When the new Fire Stick 4K (not to be confused with cube or dongle Fire devices) is released at the end of this month, I am going to see how much faster it works - or if indeed there is none of the stuttering which affected the older 4k Fire devices working with Tablo.
I can’t comment with authority on a direct VPN connection to my home network with the Tablo. I have not actually tried my Tablo well connecting to my home network with a VPN. The capability is there but I have that feature currently turned off for security reasons. I am being very cautious due to various security issues found in many routers firmware and popular VPN clients.
I should probably have elaborated. I use an outside VPN (Private Internet Access) to avoid blocking and Geo location. With that settup I am still using the remote access feature and connecting via the open internet. It prevents blocks from wherever I happen to be connecting from at the time. My ISP at home is a smaller company and we don’t have to deal with many of the issues large companies create. At Least not yet.
Well, I had a little setback here. Just to clarify, I paired with my iPhone while at my vacation home when I was up there, turned on remote connect, and the iPhone could still see the Tablo down here in California, for about a week. Suddenly it could not find the Tablo, and seemed to be looking for a local Tablo down in CA. Rats. The software is irritatingly like Apple software: there is no way to really understand what it’s trying to do, and no way to configure it properly from here. I hate unstable software, and that’s what I’m seeing now. I’ll be back up there in late November to reset things, but now I’ve lost confidence that Table provides a stable, persistent environment. Convince me otherwise.
Jack, Very sorry about that - incredibly irritating I know. My experience is that pairing with laptops, tablets, and phones is sketchy because so often they can reset things - whether cookies in browsers, or other settings.
Over several years I have pairing lost several times, and I am one of those who yearn for remote log-in with password (a la many systems, such as Plex, especially since the Tablo can “phone home” to Nuvyyo servers and so you would think could be looking at stored account and password confirmation.
However in several years using 11 Fire Sticks and Rokus remotely - I just counted - I have never lost pairing with Tablo. These remote devices are used almost every day. So I don’t know if this convinces you, but at least it may be worth your trying a playback device with a TV/monitor/projector rather than a phone, tablet, or laptop if you want solid reliability.
Good luck!
P.S. I have an utterly unconfirmed theory that Nuvyyo set things up with pairing rather than password so that all paired devices had to “originate” with home base and therefore this isn’t, in some sense, a remote broadcast of a distant antenna, in order to avoid nexus with various U.S. court cases which could have blocked the remote feature entirely. Just a theory.
“I have an utterly unconfirmed theory that Nuvyyo set things up with pairing rather than password so that all paired devices had to “originate” with home base and therefore this isn’t, in some sense, a remote broadcast of a distant antenna, in order to avoid nexus with various U.S. court cases which could have blocked the remote feature entirely. Just a theory.”
@TabloInTheCity - that is a very plausible theory! Given that satellite based providers had to have spot beams to deliver signals for specific locales. Or that television frequencies per station are limited to specific regions. Streaming companies such as Locast practice “geocentering” or “geolocation” delimiting who can receive programming by geographical location.
With satellite providers such as Dish and DirecTV, one had to get a waiver from the FCC to get programming originating from outside one’s immediate region.
I had a similar issue. I can’t tell you why but it worked fine for me for about two weeks with no special setup and then stopped.
To get it working again I had to set up port forwarding. I’ve had no problems since. If you set up port forwarding make sure you link the local IP or intranet IP to the Tablos MAC address. It might say bind the IP.
If you previously set up port forwarding a change in the local IP address could even be the issue.
Your router might describe it differently but it likely has the ability to bind an IP to the Tablo. You don’t have to worry about the WAN or internet IP because Tablo servers keep track of that.
If you need help let me know the router model and I’ll try to help.
I had the same theory. They are a relatively small company and right or wrong one of these huge corporation’s could sue them off the face of the earth. It’s happened to other companies so it’s sometimes best to play it safe.
TiVo would be gone if it weren’t for deep pockets. I think even the VCR barely survived.
Hey, I actually feel better that I’m not alone in having this problem. My first conclusion was that I did something wrong in setup or usage, but maybe not. Given that Tablo is dancing with some elephants who could crush them in a moment over remote viewing of local stations, I can understand their caution.
My goal with remote connect is probably different than most other users: I don’t actually want to view content remotely, I just want to be able to control what is being recorded. The FCC should have no power over that type of remote connection to the Tablo. From my standpoint, it would be nice if Tablo bifurcated their connection topology into two realms: one for connecting to the Tablo for control, and one connecting to the Tablo for remote viewing. But I’m an outlier, so I don’t expect them to do that just for me.
Relative to what router I have above the Tablo: what comes to mind is “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to receive.” Apologies to Sir Walter for changing deceive to receive. My internet connection in Oregon comes through an Xfinity box that’s been neutered down to a passthrough, into an ASUS router that does the security and DHCP, onto a LAN connection over to a WAP that the Tablo connects to via WiFi. Sorry. Amazing that it’s worked at all, huh? And now, my son, who determines the network configuration, wants to go to a VPN. At best, near term I hope to get a fixed IP address for the Tablo. I’ll have to put off sorting all this out for a while…
Yuk! Glad it’s neutered. Hopefully it won’t be able to breed now.
1st Bind the IP
Login to your Router.
Click on " Network Map" if you aren’t already on that page.
Next to “Client” click that number
Click on " Nuvyyo INC" (You may neeed to scroll to the next page with the arrow if you have a lot of clients.
Turn on “MAC and IP address Binding”
Click Apply. The router will save the settings.
Set up port Forwarding
Click “WAN”
Go to the tab “Virtual Server / Port Forwarding”
Service Name Just pick one you’ll remember
Source Target Leave Blank
Port Range = 31887
Local IP Select Nuvyyo INC from drop down menu
Local Port 8887
Protocol I selected Both
Add / Delete Click +
Next
Service Name Just pick one you’ll remember
Source Target Leave Blank
Port Range = 31880
Local IP Select Nuvyyo INC from drop down menu
Local Port 80
Protocol I selected Both
Add / Delete Click +
Click Apply Then wait for setting to update.
Make sure you are connected to the same network as the Tablo
Now open your Tablo phone App
Open settings in the app
Scroll down to “Tablo Connect”
If everything is correct you should see a message that says “Your Tablo is ready for remote access”.
If you want to do the VPN that’s fine and not too difficult but I only use VPN when needed. I consider it a security risk.
. Just kidding 
