No, you don’t. You don’t dedicate a tuner to a Mini. Where did you get that idea???
Any tuner is available for either recording or for live watching. So when it’s doing either of those things, then of course it’s not available for another live session or another recording.
And that’s EXACTLY how Tablo works. No different.
But if nothing’s recording and no one is watching live TV, then all tuners are idle and available–no matter how many Minis you attach to a Tivo system.
Same with Tablo.
Where did you get the idea that you “lose a tuner for each Mini”?? I think I know the answer–Tablo phrased some things in their blog to make you think that.
To repeat: the Tivo Mini does not take a tuner away and dedicate a tuner to itself. The Mini is just a streaming box that can watch either recorded or live TV, just like Tablo’s Roku channel is a streaming channel that can either watch live TV (using a tuner!), or watch recorded TV.
What is exactly your reason for being here? You’re not a Tablo owner, you spend every post criticizing the Tablo, have never had a good word to say about the Tablo…EVER! Just go over to the Tivo Community forums and stay with your own kind. I don’t see Tablo people at Tivo forums running down the Tivo in front of Tivo afficionados. You pop up whenever you feel the need to disparage Tablo and its owners. I guess Tivoholics are like that…
I really want a Tablo. I root for the underdog, and I know who Rovi is.
And sometimes, rooting means offering up the unvarnished truth–not hiding it or sticking your head in the sand.
Can Tablo be better at being a DVR than Tivo? Yes. But first, it has to be better than itself right now.
Or would you say that Tablo can stop making improvements, stop all development right now, and rest on its laurels? If the answer to that is yes, then you’ve doomed Tablo to failure.
And for the record, I’m not a “Tivoholic”. I don’t own one, never have. I have owned arguably the best two DVRs that ever lived, ReplayTV and WMC. I still use WMC. However, as I remodel I’m looking for more of an appliance with actual support–but at the same time, I have expectations on how a DVR works.
And it’s a shame that with all the experience in the world of how a superb DVR works (ReplayTV and WMC), Tablo to date still hasn’t delivered on some very, very basic concepts.
Does facing that make you feel uncomfortable for some reason? Do you agree or disagree that Tablo hasn’t delivered on some very, very basic concepts?
Accepting Tablo as it is, is like accepting a flip phone from 2003. Come on, Tablo, quit spending time writing blog posts to defend the status quo and go back and implement basic features that the world has come to expect.
I agree with this point, I disagree with where you are placing the VALUE. But that is the beauty of the free market.
I couldn’t agree with this more. Like you I have used many DVR solutions (TiVo -> MythTV -> Tablo) I was not searching for CHEAP in any of those solutions.
well, kick the Mini off of watching live TV. But then, that’s how ReplayTV did it, and that’s how Windows Media Center does it. “Hey, I need this tuner to satisfy your previous recording schedule request.” Perfectly sensible.
But it won’t kick the Mini off the system:
The Mini will happily watch recorded TV at that point.
Wow. I guess I must not be a legitimate Tablo user because I use Tablo for all my live TV viewing needs, especially all the Cub games broadcasted OTA and I am very happy with it. My husband is a heavy sports viewer and watches a ton of football live via Tablo - along with other sports like hockey, golf, and basketball. He has no complaints. I can watch my live TV on all of my devices wherever I am, home or away. I couldn’t do that with my media center PC. I am very happy using Tablo for live TV.
What Tablo is not is a device for channel surfing. That is the one caveat I give others about Tablo - that if you are a heavy channel surfer, you probably want to explore other solutions or use a direct antenna feed for surfing. But for some reason heavy channel surfers tend to think that is the only way to watch live TV and tend to believe that everyone else watches in the same way.
I think the point, which you also inferred, is that the reason Tablo isn’t a “surfing” device is because it transcodes OTA for streaming. I think that’s what was meant by “Tablo is a DVR” vs. an HDMI connected tuner recording straight mpeg2ts OTA.
With that said, mpeg2ts isn’t readily streamable, so work has to be done to make that streamable. Tivo has add on products to make this work, but there is some question about how this works for Live TV vs. recordings (with regards to tuner usage).
So… two different approaches. Tablo does not record OTA mpeg2ts. Instead, you get a user configurable transcode designed for streaming (mpeg4ts). Tivo base devices capture mpeg2ts and so you get native playback on the TV directly connected to the device. However, work is required to stream (add ons and the whole tuner use question).
You can argue that Tablo’s picture quality is always going to be worse than native. However, it’s ready to stream to multiple devices without add-ons.
Tivo is an “apple” and Tablo is an “orange”…
My daughter loves the interface of the Tablo (Roku) and often times uses that instead of the TV’s tuner to watch Live TV. I keep telling her that it’s sort of bad in that it needlessly consumes a tuner off our 2 tuner Tablo. She’s gotten better about doing Live (surfing style) TV via the TV’s tuner.
My question exactly. The view must look pretty good from the cheap seats. The guy hasn’t actually even TRIED the Tablo. Unless he wants to pony up the $ and actually do a real evaluation on the product and give us his experience, get lost. He’s just a spectator.
That was my point above… I did channel surf, not too long ago, but now my TV entertainment consists solely on streaming services, movies on my own server & Tablo, I have no desire to “surf” anymore…
I find what I want to watch based on images, synopsis, genre, show / movie name, etc. I press play.
The load time to start my show on Tablo is about the same as it is on Hulu or Amazon…
Netflix is a bit faster since they preload the show while checking it out, but not that much faster.
Yep. I really don’t channel surf either. Very few programs do I watch in real time. If I do, I generally stay on that station for the duration of the program (muting most commercials).
[quote=“cjcox, post:92, topic:7351, full:true”]
With that said, mpeg2ts isn’t readily streamable, so work has to be done to make that streamable. Tivo has add on products to make this work, but there is some question about how this works for Live TV vs. recordings (with regards to tuner usage).[/quote]
Will have to disagree with you on this. I streamed the capture mpeg2 video from my MythTV solution without hiccup to the DLNA player on my SmartTV for years. If that PC had not had severe failures I’d probably still be using MythTV,
Every single one of my Tablo recordings has significantly worse picture quality than native, and that is recording at 1080p setting.
Agree 100% with statement. Kinda wish that apple had been available when I bought my Tablo.
We never got ever how slow changing channels was on Tablo, so we NEVER use Live TV feature on there. We actually missed the beginnings of a few show due to long running on one channel and early start on another. Live TV is done on the TV.
The issue with Tablo is all the devices they support… They cant do it one way for one and different for another… Roku is probably the most used device and it cant handle mpeg2 directly…
They COULD have recorded it in mpeg2 and then transcoded each recording on the fly for devices that need it but then that means you would have to tie up a tuner every time you wanted to watch a recording, even locally, and for those of us that like to save entire seasons to watch during the summer hiatus,we would need much larger hdds…
yep… and mpeg2ts as a “file” is not necessarily true “streaming” either. Were you doing HLS chunk streaming or something else? (e.g. something other than remove file access) Anyway, main point is mpeg2 vs something more readily supported.
Again respectfully, I disagree that accessing a remote file and viewing it remotely is not streaming. The file is not local, therefore it is streamed.
Many devices (not Roku as stated) can play MPEG-2. And if the Tablo had a simple DLNA server in it my TV natively (so can almost all other Smart TVs) play the files remotely like it did with MythTV.