They are not misleading folks. The company website where the Plex logo is has this right under it about an inch away: “*This app is developed by third-parties and is not officially supported by Tablo. For support for this app, please contact the individual app developers directly.”
I believe this is quite clear. The iPad app, Roku app, etc. are written directly by Tablo.
5.1 is Surround Sound. Well it’s the minimum surround sound, 7.1 does exist but the OTA channels that are surround sound is 5.1. If you read this thread which has been here since launch, there is no promise of 5.1 at production launch. Whatever thread you are reading again is not from an official source.
With that, I will note Tablo has been great and listening to user requests and accommodating them. It just takes time.
Wait for the new Roku app or Fire TV app, I’m sure you’ll be quite happy with the TV experience while you wait for surround sound support.
We do mixdown the full 5.1 to two channel AAC which preserves the surround info. A Dolby pro-logic decoder should be able to retrieve it (although not as well as a discrete 5.1 AC3 digital stream).
I just wanted to pull this up from a previous page.
Tablo is doing a mixdown of the discrete 5.1 channels into 2 channel AAC. If you got DPL decoding on your AVR, you can separate those channels again for (non-discrete) surround sound.
We’re working with one of our chip suppliers to get them to support AC3 passthrough which would let us do surround sound, so yes it’s on the roadmap but it’s dependent on them providing firmware. We really want to do it so hopefully we’ll be able to convince them
I will continue to use Tablo. Last night I was playing tablo content to my DLP projector though chromcast plugged into one of the HDMI ports on my Pioneer VSX-1024K and tying different sound settings I found that the sudo 5.1 is available if the source content was sending it out. Just selected pro-logic and it worked well enough. Didn’t spend to much time with it, but I noticed not much/anything was coming out of the rear speakers, but I’m sure there’s a way to address this within the amp.
Some of the content seems to be better quality then others. I suppose this is again a question of how this content originated and broadcast settings during transmission. All in all I am satisfied and I do believe once I get most/all of the kinks worked out, this device will be a principle part to my home theater.
BTW - Roku 3 is on the way. Bought 2 units to start with, one for the living room and one for the Pioneer VSX-1024K, which has a dedicated MHL HDMI setup for it. Since PLEX has a ROKU channel plugin, ROKU may become the default controller, with the android table as secondary. We’ll see.
The Roku 3 uses a regular HDMI port. It is not intended for an MHL port. But it will work in the MHL port too, you just will not get any of the features allowed by a MHL port.
Not having the Roku yet, I really won’t know the difference until I get it. My Pioneer VSX-1024K specifies the MHL for Roku, but again, don’t know why yet. We’ll see.
Surround sound would be great to have. My setup I guess is not quite typical. I don’t have an AVR, instead have the Sonos 5.1 setup (playbar, sub, 2 x play:1) connected directly to TV using digital audio cable. Sonos does a decent job of creating “virtual” surround sound if the source does not provide it. The problem I am having now is my TV will not output DD5.1 via digital audio out if the source is HDMI. The next TV I get I will make sure it does this, so hopefully Tablo can get this done soon.
Surround sound would be great to have. My setup I guess is not quite typical. I don't have an AVR, instead have the Sonos 5.1 setup (playbar, sub, 2 x play:1) connected directly to TV using digital audio cable. Sonos does a decent job of creating "virtual" surround sound if the source does not provide it. The problem I am having now is my TV will not output DD5.1 via digital audio out if the source is HDMI. The next TV I get I will make sure it does this, so hopefully Tablo can get this done soon.
There are HDMI splitters that have digital audio output. You can hook one up between you’re source(s) and the TV and it will feed surround sound to the Sonos and video to the TV. There are auto-switching ones (whichever component is on) and remote controlled ones.
I really want to love Tablo but it I just can’t live without Dolby 5.1 Stereo. I’ve been so looking forward to cutting the cord but at this point I’m going to have to return the Tablo and wait for this essential feature. I’ve got a lot of my colleagues interested also in cutting the cord and going with streaming and OTA broadcasts. Unfortunately I’m going to have to stick out for Comcast a bit longer and have to recommend the same to my coworkers.
Please please Tablo engineering bring this feature soon. The sound without a true center channel is flat and so much is lost in a home theatre environment. In a good setup sound is ever bit as important as picture in bringing an immersive experience. It seems you’ve already done the hard part with good video quality now just bring us the other half!!
This is my single most requested feature. Switching from Tablo to other streaming options like VUDU, Netflix, and Hulu is quite jarring without surround sound. Now that the Roku channel looks so good, if all development stopped until surround sound is achieved I would be an extremely happy camper. I was very close to returning my Tablo due to the lack of surround sound, but I have faith in this development team.
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that discrete surround sound will never happen on the Tablo, at least on the current generation hardware. We’ve been hearing some vague “we’re working on it” statements for well over a year now, with zero evidence its going to happen. It is but one of several major omissions (including 1 HDD limit, 2TB HDD limit, and no lossless recording) from the product that should have been resolved before the first unit even shipped. Lesson learned: Never buy a product for “coming soon” features that aren’t shipping today.
@TabloTV Please prove me wrong here, but I think many Tablo fans are giving up hope and starting to regard this product as a “miss” for serious A/V use.
Stop fussing over the details; the clear fact is that the roll out of features has been very frustrating to everyone for two reasons: 1) it is painfully slow, way slower than any startup I have ever been involved with and 2) there is no roadmap, schedule, etc, just “Stay tuned” and the occasional surprise. Tablo would go a long, long way in getting user confidence and good will back by simply publishing a road map with dates and then meeting it. Readers, whether owners or those considering it, could take an objective look and make an informed decision, otherwise as someone else opined, they just make it up and assume “never.” I could easily bring my media server with two twin-tuner cards and SAGETV installed and get rid of the Tablo, and get roaming access via Plex. I’m sure others will do that when they have no expectation of what is coming and when. “Stay tuned!!!” is clever but very unsatisfying. Google bought SAGETV just to throw them away, and anyone considering the purchase of a Tablo unit should be concerned that they are likewise buying into an orphan and we all just post stuff here to keep it somehow alive,.
Hi guys - We know that this is a key feature for a subset of the population.
The feature is still on the roadmap but we still don’t have an ETA for this. We’ve been focused over the last little while on increasing the number of devices that support playback for Tablo content and still have some more work to do on this.
We realize the waiting is difficult but that’s all the news I have to share for now.