Tablo 4th Gen 2-Tuner Over-The-Air (OTA) DVR – Watch, Pause &… › Customer reviews

Top positive review

Positive reviews›

5.0 out of 5 starsAn excellent DVR solution at a very reasonable price.

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2024

Being a long-time Tivo user, I wanted to try out the new Tablo DVR and see if I may want to switch to it from Tivo. I had looked at Tablo DVRs previously but had never bought one due to the fact that Tablo seemed to “nickel and dime” you to death if you purchased one of their DVRs. They would charge you a certain price for the DVR, then you had to purchase a hard drive for the DVR to store your recordings on. After that you had to pay a monthly, yearly or lifetime subscription fee for the guide to be able to use the DVR and on top of that, if you wanted commercial skip, that was yet another fee. It got pretty expensive by the time you were through! So, kudos to Tablo/Nuvyyo for coming out with this new DVR and a new business model that does away with all the extra fees and is much more consumer-friendly. You just pay for the DVR and you’re done. Great!

So after using this new Tablo for a couple weeks, here are my thoughts about it. Setup was pretty straightforward. I created my account online and went through the setup process on the device. It hung up at one point so I had to restart it and then the process completed without any further issues. Here are my pros and cons about the device:

Pros:

Device size is very compact – about 5” round. So it will fit in most any size cabinet or table where space is limited.

DVR can be accessed on anything and anywhere in the house that supports the Tablo app – smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, Roku etc. without needing another device.

The program guide is included for free – no monthly or annual charge.

There are over 40 free streaming channels included that can be recorded from.

Programs can be listed by genre and channel.

Channel setup in settings lists channel signal strength on all channels at the same time as a string of 1-4 dots with color coding.

When fast forwarding or rewinding through a recorded program, the UI will display thumbnails of the scenes.

Cons:

Because no remote is included with device, navigating the interface takes more keystrokes than a Tivo which has many dedicated buttons to access features instantly.

At the time of this writing, the channel guide has only 6 days listings vs. 14 for Tivo.

There’s a delay of several seconds when accessing another day’s listings for the guide to refresh.

There is a several-second delay when tuning in to any channel.

There are no channel up and down buttons for surfing channels. Instead, you have to arrow down to get a horizontal row with thumbnails of shows currently airing from which you can choose one of those shows. However, this is only available in the Android TV app, not the Android mobile app or the Roku app. On those you have to exit the program and go back to the guide to choose another program.

Program descriptions are often very minimal. For example, no actors for a given show or movie are listed in the description. Original air date only shows when you are in the guide and click on the show. It then shows in the pop-up display box. It does not show for recorded shows.

If you leave the Tablo app to go to another app and then come back, the Tablo app will often start over again like you’re running it for the first time rather than go back to the place you were at when leaving the app.

When scrolling through the channel guide, if the cursor is positioned in the channels column, the thumbnail and program description will not update as you’re scrolling down or up the guide. On the Android TV app, the thumbnail and description disappear. In the Roku app they stay to whatever thumbnaiil and program description were last displayed.

There is no option to restart a recorded program when playing it back if you’ve watched part of it already. However, a program can be rewound pretty quickly to return to the beginning.

The included amount of storage – 128GB, may not be enough for someone who records a lot of programs. For that person, they will need to buy an external USB hard drive or SSD to increase recording capacity.

The DVR has 2 tuners vs. 4 tuners on some other DVR products which may be a deal-breaker for some users, depending again on how many programs you plan to record with it.

Overall, in spite of some of these cons which may or may not be important to the individual user, I think this is an excellent DVR solution, especially if you don’t currently own any type of DVR. I’m not aware of another stand-alone DVR solution that you can purchase at this price point.

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

1.0 out of 5 starsHardware is Ok. Software is horrible. Just one weird interface design choice after another.

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2024

Riddled with bugs and has the most user hostile interface that I’ve encounter in quite awhile. Just bizarre interface choices as to where the menu choices lead one to and the non-stickey nature of the Live grid.

E.g., one can tell the Live grid to display only Favorite channels, but it isn’t sticky in that when one comes back from watching a channel the grid defaults back to all channels. E.g., when in the program grid, if a show is chosen to watch, then when the grid is returned to one is placed at the beginning rather than where one was before picking the show. Makes channel surfing in an already clumsy interface even more involved. E.g., if there is a scheduling conflict for recording shows that conflict is tagged on only one of the shows. Since, on the Library screen, scheduled recordings are grouped by shows rather than by time slots finding a conflict can be difficult in a longer list of schedules. Although not tagged as a conflict on the channel grid, conflicting shows can be found if one goes to the appropriate day.

I could go on.

Also, under Roku one needs to reboot the device as something Tablo is doing really messes with Roku’s head in that either Roku or Tablo consistently lock up.

Table is obviously a hardware company (the device’s tuner is better than the one in my Sony TV), but the software acts like it has never been tested or that any thought was given as to how someone might use it.

My solution is to split my antenna input between Tablo and my Sony and use the Sony tuner most of the time and Tablo only to record/watch a recorded show. Of course, I lose the free channels, but that’s a choice I make to keep my sanity on a day to day basis.

Football season is coming.

The above comments refer to Tablo on Roku. Tablo on FIre TV has different, but equally annoying flaws. Perversely, the software interfaces across the Roku, Fire TV and my iPad are maddeningly different in subtle ways.

Additional edit: So many software bugs and weird design choices continue to manifest the longer I use the device, but two bugs have occurred that I can’t live with.

The device does not record reliably. Often an episode, in this case a scheduled football/soccer match is split into two sections. Sometimes the entire match can be found thru both sections and sometimes not, but even then they often won’t play and there is no scrub bar to move thru the recording.

Out of the blue, Roku and also Fire TV couldn’t find the Tablo. I rebooted the Tablo, Roku and Fire TV. I deleted and reinstalled the software. I assigned a reserved address to the Tablo in my router. All to no avail. My iPad can still find Tablo, so I know it isn’t a problem with my network.

Device runs hot enough to fry an egg, which is probably at the root of some of the issues.

I wrote mainframe and Windows software and managed software engineeers for many years. If this software were written and/or beta tested by anyone on my team they would be terminated with prejudice. It acts as though it was writen by a summer intern.

Unit sent back for refund.

Edit #2: It occurs to me that a great deal of the interface problems can be resolved by running Plex on top of the Tablo hardware, but since I sent the unit back I can’t test this out. I bought an HDHomerun tuner instead and Plex works in addressing the ugliness of HDHomerun interface. Next stop is to run the Plex server on an Nvidia Shield and remove the need to have my PC on all the time. FWIW.