When I called to cancel my TiVo subscription i was offered a lifetime subscription of $180 for my current box, which was the equivalent of what I was paying per year. I told Phil that ship had sailed and I wanted a whole house solution and TiVo wasn’t the best fiscal option.
Phil the tech wanted to know my other choice and I told him it was Tablo and he said he’d hear of it (I’m SURE he had!) Then he asked me about my viewing experience and I told him as of now there were less bells and whistles, but the price and flexibility of Tablo was well worth the trade off and improvements were on the way He also wanted to know about the the quality of customer service and I told him it was excellent.
When I chose TiVo 2 1/2 years ago they were really the only viable option if you wanted a DVR to use with an antenna. Clearly that is no longer the case and TiVo knows they are no longer the only game in town. In my opinion, they will have to up their game and lower their prices if they want to remain a viable option for cord cutters looking for a whole house solution and good value.
It’s a fair point that there are more options nowadays, just none approaching Tivo’s experience. But hopefully, that will change with time. The Channel Master DVR+ is interesting as well, it just needs more polish. That’s what I mean by ‘hopefully’.
My experience with Tablo was very bad, but with time, maybe things will improve and I will get back in the game.
@VegasSteve my first experience with Tablo was very frustrating! A chronic “loading, please wait…” problem made TV through Tablo an unwatchable experience.
After trying a variety of fixes, I switched from Uverse (as Uverse doesn’t support 5Ghz channels in my area)to TWC and got a modem and a duel band router. Putting Tablo on a 5GHz channel solved the loading/buffering issue about 95% of the time. I took this approach as I know regardless which provider I use to get my content, more of it will be streaming and 2.4 GHz channels are becoming increasingly crowded. I am also aware of the Channel Master DVR+. My reason for not picking it is, that as of right now it’s not a whole house solution.
So bottom line is, as of yet,Tablo isn’t working seamlessly for me. Tablo currently isn’t the polished product TiVo is, but I am willing to make the trade for a whole house solution and the lower cost over time. I am also looking forward to seeing what future Tablo revisions bring.
He also wanted to know about the the quality of customer service and I told him it was excellent.