So I’ve wondered whether it’s bad/good/indifferent to leave the Tablo streaming to my Roku overnight. On one hand it’s nice to turn on the TV in the morning and have the news on but then I wonder if that’s good on the hard drive or Tablo. I suppose one drawback would be that tuner not being available to record but I have the 4-tuner and so far haven’t had any conflicts. @tablotv @tablosupport What have you found?
I would not leave it streaming if you’re not watching. That is constantly using one tuner which generate more heat than an ideal Tablo.
Heat kills devices over time, period.
I exit everything on the Roku prior to going to bed. Does the Tablo have a “are you still watching” feature like SlingTV and my converter box, where after so many hours it ask, and if you don’t answer it terminates the stream?
The Tablo shuts off unused tuners after 1 hour.
A watch live on Roku gets terminated 5 minutes after show ends…wish there was a way to watch live indefinitely like on Android. Hopefully @TabloTV will get it there.
@beastman I’m pretty sure you’re referring to a recorded show. Live TV doesn’t shut down after 5 minutes on me at the end of a show. It just keeps tuned for the next show.
@Snowcat Understand that when a live show is being streamed thru Roku the tuner is used until you back out of the program.
This question is in the Roku thread as that’s what I’m asking about. The tuner will stream as long as you leave it tuned. Trying to learn what if any drawbacks there are in doing this.
In addition to what I said, the continuous watching of Live TV will have prolonged writing to the storage drive in the Tablo itself and/or the USB HDD as it constantly caches live TV so you can FF and RW.
The HDD has moving parts so if anything the constant read/write to the HDD will cause early drive failure. You are using a consumer level drive which was not designed for 24/7 read and write.
Thanks and I remember reading from someone who pointed out Tablo does spell early doom for hard drives because of the enormous amount of read/write going on. But I was wondering whether a constant write would be better than a stop/start from multiple overnight recordings.
When I watched NBC Evening News live last night followed by News 36 at 6, at 6:05 it stopped streaming. I pressed the back button and went to the guide and selected News 36. Note that it was scheduled to record, so it recorded ad I watched live. Most nights I’m not home to catch the beginning.
FYI I’m still watching the same channel I turned on at 7:50 and on my 4th show and it hasn’t stopped streaming. This is the way Tablo via Roku has worked since day one. Never times out.
@beastman It might be that Tablo simply plays what the one tuner is recording when you go to watch it at the same time so it will behave like a recorded show and disconnect from that tuner at the end which is show+5 minutes.
The next time I’m home in time to watch it all live, I’ll cancel the recording to see what happens.
I left my Roku tuned to a Tablo channel overnight, and you are correct that it keeps that channel tuned the whole time. I do recommend exiting out of the Tablo app overnight then.
Bet you felt like a rebel too! But I’m thinking it’s a good idea too I just don’t know why. It’s not done on purpose and I don’t realize I’ve done it until I turn on the TV and think “doh!” and then “hey nice, I don’t have to click anything”. Just really curious what the Tablo folks and others think. They have to have some thought on it. Is it ok to leave it on the guide? Or ok to leave it on the Recordings? Or on the the old app just leaving it to where you can select Live, Recordings, Sports, (been so long I don’t remember them all) , etc. Really cuts down the time in getting to watch something. But if it’s hard on the Tablo then I certainly don’t want to do it.
And how cool would an auto-tune/timer feature be? So you can wake up, turn on the TV and already have a channel tuned.
Watching a single channel all night long won’t harm your Tablo at all. To really stress the unit you basically have to have recordings going on all tuners for a week 24/7. Even then it won’t melt down or explode but it may reboot.
Thanks…feel much better. And some version of that last line belongs on a t-shirt :))
@mullermj I think the Tablo is always on, so you can watch a show remotely. If you have something scheduled in the guide, it puts it on a tuner and records.
I just connected another antenna directly to the TV so if I want to watch live and not record, I can. The antenna isn’t as good as the one on the Tablo, but it gets all the channels except 17 and 62. So I can watch the Spurs and Rangers regular games that are on without having to record them.
Why not just split the first antenna that has better reception? One cable to the Tablo, one cable to the HDTV. That’s what many of us do. Works perfectly.
I have a small antenna on all my TVs as a backup and use a splitter from the roof antenna between the main TV and Tablo and yep that works great! For me that was easy but for others it may not be depending on locations of everything.
I have a 4 tuner and know the signal is already getting split in the Tablo. The antenna on the Tablo is an indoor Mohu Leaf 50. Channel 17 is 3 red circles and I think it won’t work at all after splitting.