Newbie question. I do not have the “guide data service”. I schedule a recording by going to the Live TV guide, finding the first instance of the show I want to record, visiting that (Ok button), then choosing “Create Repeating Manual Program”. In the next screen, at the bottom, it says “Keep” with options “Auto” (default), 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, All. I’ve been going with the default “Auto” but I do not know what this means. Can someone explain? Probably related, when I’ve watched one instance of a recurring (nightly or weekly) show, what’s the most efficient way of deleting that one recording once it ends? More generally, is there a detailed User’s Guide somewhere that explains these things?
Good question since it isn’t very clear. I am pretty confident that the default is “All recordings”, so the Tablo won’t delete any automatically. I think it really should say “All (Default)” instead.
If you set it to something else, it will only keep the last 1, 3, 5, etc recordings. That is useful if you record the news most of all.
For a detailed guide on this subject, here is the official blog about it: How to Set Recordings on Your Tablo OTA DVR | Over The Air (OTA) DVR | Tablo (tablotv.com)
The way it is appearing to me, none of the “Keep” options actually have the word “default”. What I meant to say was that the word “Auto” is highlighted (it is the only one highlighted) implying to me that that is what I’m getting unless I choose one of the other options. But whether it is the default or not, I’d still like to know what it means. I think I understand the numbers, namely, if I choose “3” for example, then when it goes to record a fourth airing, it will delete the oldest one so that I only ever have the 3 newest recordings of that show.
Thanks for the blog link. I’ll have to go over it in more detail, but on first reading, it doesn’t seem to address thie “Keep Auto, 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, All” business.
I found another blog post with more info: Now Available: Advanced Recording Features for Tablo OTA DVRs | Over The Air (OTA) DVR | Tablo (tablotv.com)
“Auto” means use the “Auto-delete recording settings”. So if you have that checked in your settings, it will delete recordings when the hard drive runs out of space. It still could be clearer that it also keeps all recordings, rather than a specified amount.
Thanks! I suspected it might have something to do with that. Going forward, I think I’ll probably go with one of the numbers (like 3). For the kinds of things we’ll be recording from local stations, we’ll have little desire to keep them around for long.