Tablo vs HDhomerun

General Discussion
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Apologies if this has been posted previously but there have been so many frustrations with the Tablo for the last couple of months, I thought it would be a good idea to read a (hopefully) informed and unbiased review of these two competitors:

The reviewer clearly preferred the Tablo, as of about 12 months ago, and I can see why. Let’s hope that this weekend is the last time we’ll have so many glitches with our 4Gs!

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Ive had both devices running at my home. I prefer the Tablo since there isnt a monthly fee.

With that said, " last time we’ll have so many glitches with our 4Gs" nothing is perfect but also since there isnt a monthly fee, I can
tolerate a few outages. Its better than my $150 monthly bill with DirecTV.

CloudFlare glitches and half the internetS drops.

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I had a HD connect which I gave away and replaced with a HDHR5-4K connected to plex on shield. HD itself is a solid device but plex and channels have 10 times more features then I need to DVR OTA.

I hated installing a plex update because you ended up with a number of useless changes and features. But give the gen 4 tablo a chance, it’s catching up.

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Is PLEX required, or just necessary if using a NAS?

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My unit is a 4-tuner ATSC 3.0 kick starter unit. These models are basically tuners that distribute the OTA via ethernet. So they need DVR software somewhere. The new units are branded as Flex and have the HD DVR software built in. So if you can get by using the HD DVR software and the yearly cost around $35 that’s fine.

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This is why I loved the Recast (and now the Tablo) - no annual fee for the guide (which you really must have for the darned thing to work)!

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tablo is the best deal on the market. But it’s missing a lot of the legacy UI capabilities and it’s continued need to access the tablo servers is unbelievable. I also have never seen a DVR where the library/all includes both the scheduled and recorded entries.

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I’m OK with $35 a year.
I do find the Tablo $4.99/month ridiculous.
Not money-wise, but the fact that I can’t pay $60 just once a year.

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I have a NAS and never used PLEX.

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I had an HDHomeRun a few years ago but got rid of it because:

  • I had trouble tuning some channels - believe it or not, my new Tablo has been a better tuner, but I just ordered (yet to receive) an amplifier to try to improve things more.
  • The family found using the hdhomerun overall kludgy both with plex or just their subscription option - this was the biggest reason I stopped using it.

The Tablo by comparison, while flawed and seems to run a bit slower than the hdhomerun, is at least simple enough for the family to use.

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Agreed. My family is very comfortable using the Tablo.

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On the other hand, my Tablo is failing to connect again, forcing me to offline mode after vanishing for minutes, then telling me the connection is working, then failing when I try to reconnect. Now, it is hanging again and refusing to enter offline mode.

My device is connected via Ethernet with a dedicated lease - my internet is fine and I can see Traffic to/from the Tablo on my router. (And the Tablo support site is showing a sporadic outage - AGAIN.)

After my first 2 weeks I love the Tablo - when it works - but the Tablo seems to struggle at reliably performing the basic “watch TV” use case.

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You are starting to use Tablo at a poor time. They have some things going on, including switching servers, which has caused some hiccups. They last six weeks the server connections have been intermittent, with good days, bad days, and the occasional very bad day. Prior to that, mine had been more or less trouble free since August.

I am confident that they will get it smoothed out.

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