We want to drop Comcast entirely; no phone, no internet, no cable. We will use our T-mobile cell phones for all communications and will periodically use a mobile hotspot to connect devices in the home. We have excellent OTA reception for all major broadcast networks and want a reasonable DVR capability for recording our favorite programs and skipping commercials. Can we:
Purchase a Tablo DVR and a Roku device to connect to our TV
Install the Tablo and Roku using Comcast internet service
Disconnect Comcast but retain our in-home network
Activate our mobile hotspot to update the program guide periodically
Set daily or weekly program recording events
Deactivate our mobile hotspot
Later, watch and delete recorded programs without an internet connection
In this scenario, the internet will remain unavailable to the devices most of the time. They will only be updated periodically to maintain the program guides.
Is this feasible?
If we set a program, say, The Late Show on CBS, to record Monday through Friday, will it continue to record each week without an internet connection if we go on vacation for a month?
You could maintain you Local Area Network(LAN) and WiFi without a connection to the internet…
But the lack of an always on WAN connected network, I’d think you’d have problems reliably getting the Guide data…which I think updates daily on the Tablo.
And I’m not sure how a Roku behaves when it can’t connect to the outside world…but that’s easy to test.
Hopefully the Tablo folks will chime in. I would think that manual recordings will work fine in this scenario, but scheduled recordings based on guide data will have problems unless you download guide data at least once every two weeks. If you ignored it for a month, it would just record whatever episodes were around for that 2 week period of guide data.
The Roku will work without an internet connection just fine.
Well the Tablo channel on a Roku will work fine without an Internet connection. However, if say your Roku device loses WiFi connection to your Netgear router for whatever reason, you will not be able to reconnect it to the router. It will fail on the 3rd step of the connecting and not make the WiFi connection. The 3rd step checks the WiFi network you’re connecting to has a live internet connection. This is a known problem with Roku devices.
Unless you can connect your Netgear router to your WiFi hotspot from your cell phone your Netgear router will never have a live internet connection again.
I haven’t tried it in a long time, but it used to work fine. Tablo channel on the Roku connects fine and pulls the Live TV grid data from the Tablo device itself. Snowcat also confirmed this was the case.
I understand that’s the way it’s supposed to work, and recall the Live TV guide grid was populated when my Roku connected to my Tablo before I lost internet.
However, it didn’t populate the Live TV guide grid when I lost internet before connecting to my Tablo.
I’ll test my theory this weekend.
Kinda need the internet now.
How about if I activate my mobile hotspot periodically, connect the Tablo and Roku to it long enough to update the guide data, and then deactivate my mobile hotspot?
And, let’s say the above scenario works; will I be able to set a program to record weekly, every Monday from 8:00-9:00, and then go on vacation, come home a month later, and all of the program broadcasts for the last month will be recorded?
Or, does the program recording scenario rely on updated guide data to identify the program?
Thanks again for helping me determine if this solution will meet my requirements.
To me it would seem that it would very hard to use a 14 day guide and go on vacation for a month and expect any recordings specified via a guide to extend beyond 14 days.
But if you really know what recordings you want to make, maybe you could use manual recording. Currently you can’t schedule manual recordings via Roku. But many of the other apps allow for scheduling recordings via the manual recording feature.
So your intent is to change the network connection on the Tablo frequently? Say once a week?
The Tablo would be hard wired to your Netgear router for it to work with the Roku. Then to get the guide data you would connect the Tablo to your WiFi hotspot? The switching of the Tablo back and forth between network connections may not be as quick and easy as you want it to be. In theory it should work, but downloading 7 days worth of guide data on demand may take a while (I have no idea how long cause my Tablo downloads only 1 day at a time every night).
I would bet your nightly tablo guide update downloads more then 1 days worth of updates. Otherwise how would all of those TBD’s spread across 14 days disappear out of the sports section of the guide.
You are correct - I meant approximately 1 day. After the initial setup and it downloads all 14 days, I can only assume the nightly downloads are 24 hours worth of data plus any updates for other events in the next 13 days. I have no idea how mucn / many updates there are for the next 13 days, but I can’t see it being a ton?
On the forum, based on my number of channels and show (not episodes) I ask that question 30-60 days ago. And surprising tablo support supplied the amount of MB/month.
So if you want their answer it’s somewhere in the forum.
I have no intention of terminating my cable internet access, but would like to know if we have an internet outage, say from a storm, can I still watch OTA via Tablo on my TVs assuming we have power?
If it is a Roku, then yes you can. For FireTV to work, you would have to disable automatically logging into the internet at startup, otherwise you won’t get anything to work on it. I have no idea on AppleTv or AndroidTv boxes.
In another thread I just located Tablo Support said:
“The phone and tablet apps have since been updated to work on the LAN without Internet connectivity. The only Tablo app that requires an Internet connection is now http://my.tablotv.com/”
You’ll be able to watch Tablo recordings, and Live TV without internet.
However, without internet, my Rokus don’t display guide data, like what show is on, for Live TV.
I can still select the channel to watch Live TV, but won’t know what’s on until it tunes in that channel.
You’d think they’d cache the guide data, but yeah, no.
We had a short internet outage the other day and I could not get my iPad to connect to my Tablo. I would get the Connect to Tablo screen. When I tapped the button it said it could not find the Tablo on my network. I have my own router and the Tablo is hard wired to it. When the internet connection came back on the Tablo worked as usual.
Since the router probably was retaining the WAN IP address is there something I would need to do to use my own LAN without the internet?
Note I have only Apple devices: iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.
