Oh snap, the Roku app doesn’t seem to be supporting Tablo Connect. Even tried with my external IP.
Major bummer. Any chance this it’s coming soon?
@YYC_TV - Sorry, our devs can’t seem to find a way to make this happen through Roku. Put it in the feature request thread - the more people ask for something, the harder we’ll try to get it done!
So it looks like Roku still cannot connect remotely to Tablo via Tablo Connect. That was actually the primary use case why I bought the Tablo and the Roku stick. I just paired the Roku in my home network with the Tablo and expected it work remotely - but it does not.
Is this a feature request that can be bumped up in the Table / Roku development pipeline?
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I don’t expect it anytime in the next 12 months, and it may never be done. There are just so many other issues for them to work on that should have higher priority.
But don’t lose hope. There are two alternatives.
- Get a FireTv stick instead. It does support Tablo Connect, and it is priced about the same as the Roku stick.
- Subscribe to a VPN service to make you remote network appear to be connected to your home network. Then you can use your Roku stick remotely.
You don’t need to subscribe to a VPN service, you can create a VPN server for free at your home. This will allow you to use the Roku remotely, this is how I use the Roku 3 remotely.
Even better. 
Thanks for your answers, and sorry for the late “checking back in”. Is there any particular VPN service that you could recommend, that works well with this setup, or could you let me know what free VPN server product you are using at home?
DD-WRT installed on a router can run a VPN service.
The only caveat to this is that since the Roku will think it’s streaming locally you need to have an Internet at home where the Tablo is located that has a fast upload speed, about 10 Mbps upload for the 720p Roku / Chromecast recording quality setting.
Great - thanks for the quick reply! I was just thinking to install a DD-WRT VPN router anyway, so I will try that. I currently only have about 5 Mbps upload with my service, so I will have to see how that goes. Would be great if we could also configure streaming quality in local mode!
What recording quality do you have the Tablo set to?
5 Mbps upload speed is likely going to be too slow, VPN has a small overhead as well. It will results in buffering issues on the remote Roku.
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It is supposed to be a 3 Mbps stream, but with a 10 Mbps upload speed it works fine for me. The peak upload speed is about 7-8 Mbps when I monitor the router.
The regular 720p setting is a 5 Mbps stream but I get buffering on that setting with a 10 Mbps upload connection.
I have it at HD 720p. I can currently watch it remotely via Chromecast / Tablo App on Android, although one of the Android devices I have misbehaves such that whenever I want to skip forward 30 secs it goes back to time 0 and I can never leave from there any more - but that’s another issue.
I will definitely try the FireTV stick as snowcat recommends.
I might also try to rip Tablo recordings and via a slow background connection upload them to a NAS on the remote location and then watch them via something like the Plex app. My main remote use is at our weekend house where we have virtually no local TV channels so we can watch the TV channels from NYC.
On said Android device where it streams fine, is the “Remote Streaming Quality” set to Full Quality? Or is set to something lower?
If it is, then it might work fine via the VPN with the Roku.
I normally set it to 1 Mbps which gives me not so nice image quality, but generally no buffering. If I set it to 1.5 Mbps the image quality is quite nice and I might get occasional re-buffering. So yes - I do set it to less than Full Quality. So I will certainly try the VPN setup.
Can you try the 4 Mbps remote quality setting? If that doesn’t work then the VPN will 100% not work.
I will try. Last night unfortunately the Tablo lost connection to the hard disk 
- so once that’s fixed I can stream again…
Thanks for all the help and suggestions so far!!
- Your HDD should not be losing connection to the Tablo unless it suffers from an HDD disconnect issue, which sometimes can be fixed with upgrading the firmware on the HDD. What make and model is your HDD?
- You can still stream Live TV, only 1 channel at a time without an HDD. So you can still try it.
To 1.: it is a WD Elements 2TG USB 3.0
To 2.: Yes - live TV streaming at 4 Mbps seems to work just fine
Those WD Elements drives are notorious for disconnect issues. Connect it to your computer, use the WD firmware utility to update the firmware. Even if it tells you the firmware is up to date, force an update to re-install the current version. This has worked for others.
Now try the Full Quality on the Android app, do you get buffering? Try to watch for at least 5 minutes to see if the buffer can be sustained.