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!
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.
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.
Is PLEX required, or just necessary if using a NAS?
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.
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)!
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.
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.
I have a NAS and never used PLEX.
I had an HDHomeRun a few years ago but got rid of it because:
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.
Agreed. My family is very comfortable using the Tablo.
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.
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.
Yeah, looking at the threads I had same impression as to bad timing and also hope the reliability improves. I also think Tablo have made some software design decisions that make outages worse from a user experience perspective. Even with the issues, there is enough good to keep trying with the Tablo.
I will admit, some people have had some genuine, long-term problems. I can’t deny that. But, for me, my Tablo experience, while not perfect, has been overwhelmingly positive. Plus, I’ve been keeping track and Tablo has saved me well over $2000.00 since I told DirecTV to get lost.
Tablo isnt perfect… But I have to say there is a small amount of “science” behind it, to make it work very well. It does have occasional outages, however my unit recovers fairly well afterwards… Like @KGBnut said, DirecTV was screwing me in price increases, so I don’t miss the $150+ Streaming/TV bill I was paying out a month.
Well just got hdhr flex 4k installed. So far so good. Plug in and download app didn’t even have to do a channel scan. Works great just as advertised. I am getting channel i never got with tablo. Plus has 3.0 tuners. It cost $200 but it works. Time will tell but i recommend checking it out.
Just be aware the Flex 4K ATSC 3.0 tuners only work with non-encrypted ASTC 3.0 channels, a lot of ATSC 3.0 channels are encrypted these days.
If I were looking for a Tablo alternative it would be zapperbox at this point because they support ATSC 3.0 encrypted.
And I would still wait. Why? While it’s possible to create a very very very narrowly supported device today, they likely need to figure out their DRM cr*p so that it can be used more broadly. Granted, even so, remote, cross device and usability in general as defined today, is absolutely horrible. If any of them worked for me, they’d all be fired by now.
Totally agree. That’s exactly why I’m just sticking with my OG Tablo until the longer term landscape becomes more clear and we see what the Tablo ATSC 3.0 solution is.