I’ve cut the cord for over 9 months now, but Football season is about to start. I need to know about Tablo’s performance handling live sports broadcasts. We watch the rest of our TV from hulu/netflix. So I am buying the Tablo literally just to do 1 thing… get my OTA live sports onto my Home Theater while preserving the high quality uncompressed OTA image.
Here’s my intended setup:
Large powered antenna in attic
powered ampifier in my datacom closet
Coax to OTA input on Tablo
WD Elements for HDD
Tablo wired Cat6a to home network 1Gb switch
1Gb wired Windows 10 PC (dedicated HTPC) running Tablo Web App
HDMI from PC to AVR, HDMI from AVR to Espon 5030UB Projector
110" screen.
I won’t use any Roku/ATV or other streaming box (unless you say that will improve performance), or need to get this to other TV’s in the house, I don’t really care if it records or not… a pause button would be great. But I’ll consider all that bonus.
I’ve read on the forums and online review about issues of pixelation, delays in loading the guide, its inability to keep up with high action like sports, compression and so on.
Assuming my current OTA signal is plenty strong (which I suspect it is) and assuming network performance is fine (which I suspect it is), is the local OTA broadcast of NFL games going to look good? OR is the Tablo going to compress it (what if I dont record or want a pause button, is that even an option?), or not support 1080p, or struggle to keep up and pixelate, or anything else other than basically just pass it through?
I’ve thought about buying Hauppage’s little $70 USB OTA Tuner because it seems super simple and pass thru, but even it doesn’t support 1080p and has to use its own software app to display… so I thought Tablo might be worth getting since it seems to get great reviews.
I’d get an apple tv4 instead of using a PC with the projector, easier to pause and such imo.
As far as the quality goes, I’ve noticed 720p channels really come out nicely on the Tablo when watching sports, while 1080i channels are not as smooth. After playing around with the picture settings I can get it to look about as good as the image I get from the cable only, without going through Tablo. Not sure how much picture enhancement options you have wih your projector though
Also note you won’t get 5.1 sound if you use the Tablo.
I’ve never had any issues watching football. 99% of the posts are “user error” related.
With that said, if you have bad reception… you have bad reception. And Tablo does transcode so it is “different” from native, but certainly not horrible.
Tablo is a great device… but it can’t fix broken stuff unrelated to the Tablo.
For me, I am happy with watching sports on Tablo, but I use the 720 p recommended setting and haven’t tried the higher resolution ones. But I just watch baseball and I don’t need high fidelity. My husband watches football and is also happy. However, maybe I read your post wrong, but it looks like you are looking for completely uncompressed video and you don’t need recording or pause capabilities. You seem to think that the Tablo can do pass-thru functionality. The Tablo compresses the video - both live and recorded - so that it can be efficiently streamed to other devices. It does not connect to your TV directly. If you want uncompressed video and don’t need record/pause - you would be better off just running the antenna cable to your TV.
That said, I love the Tablo. I just don’t understand why you need it for your specific singular requirement: high quality uncompressed OTA image. Just hook up your antenna directly - or maybe use a Windows 7 media center PC with a tuner card.
He’s using a projector, not a TV. But other than that, I agree. He should get a tuner box, maybe one like in the “Backup to my Tablo” thread. That way he would have pause/RW/FF functionality. But the Tablo is not the right solution for him.
I have had no issues with watching my OTA games using Tablo, but I am very new & have only watched two recorded pre-season games thus far. But I would agree with others here that, given what you want, there is better/less expensive solutions that would fit your needs.
I chose Tablo because I wanted a whole home DVR solution for OTA content. With Tablo I can access my OTA live & recorded programming from all of the TV’s (4) throughout my home via Fire TV devices. The additional advantage I wanted & achieved is that all my TV content (Tablo OTA, PS Vue cable channels, Amazon Prime & Netflix) are all accessed from a single interface - my Fire TV devices.
I’ve had great results with the max 1080p setting with the AppleTV 4. Quality looks fantastic even over wireless. Not a fan of the Firetv video quality compared to AppleTV.
So far so good on Football. I mean you get the quick screen glitch every once in a while but its seldom. Watched the whole Olympics without many issues. I think it was bad for like 5 minutes once.
When tablo works its a really amazing fantastic device. When the mobile app fails is pisses me off really bad though.
I have an “all hard wired” setup, using a four tuner Tablo, Roku 3’s, Nexus Players and the highest 1080 quality setting. I don’t have any issues whatsoever and the quality is stunning. So no problems here.
Don’t get me started on the blithering failure of Tablo and remote access . . . that is another story.
All sports Look awesome on my sammy 65 4k, (just remember to turn motion blur setting to off in sammy settings) the upscaler makes 480 look darn good. Hard wired / hdmi-appletv4-asus 68u-tablo-antenna -4 port CM3414 distribution amp that feed 4 coax tv.s in diff rooms… from roof thru a splitter/tv then tablo
Another fan with the Apple TV 4 and four tuner tablo again. Antenna type, location, wired and wireless set up and good broadband connection all come into play.
That said, I hope they incorporate what you can do in the iOS app. I know it’s slow going and I’m a fan here to stay of Tablo and appletv4.
No issue with sports here, does not matter what the resolution is.
I am simply amazed at the quality of the signal over cable. The difference to me is amazing.
I had guys over for the football playoffs and they all wanted to know why the picture was so sharp, what did I do to the cable…
When I told them it was an antenna, no one believed me until the wife came down and heard antenna talk. Turned right around and went back upstairs. Yeah she gets annoyed when I talk about this stuff. And she told them the antenna is up in the attic. They could not believe it.
But she likes seeing a much smaller cable bill every month!