Tablo DUAL 64GB OTA DVR for Cord Cutters - with WiFi - For use with HDTV Antennas

Bought this while it was on sale over Black Friday. Used it for a month now and it works well, but not great. I wish it wouldn't take so long to buffer a channel.It usually takes 5-10 seconds, but sometimes longer. It did not seem to matter whether it was running off of wireless or wired connections. It's not like your typical channel surfing. You have to back out of a channel completely before selecting another channel. I'm hoping they update it so that it can continue playing the channel you're on while giving the ability to browse the guide to see what else is on. Recording works well with the internal storage. I have not yet tried the external option, but may in the future. Remote viewing worked surprisingly, very well. I was able to watch a full live episode with no problems at all. What sold me on the product was the ability to view my OTA channels from one source, without needing to run a coax cable to each TV in the house. It works well on Fire TV sticks, but has problems on an android box I have.Recording w/out the paid subscription is awful. It looses time it seems on when to start recording. I've tried a handful of times and no matter what I set the time to, it starts it 15 minutes too late to catch the beginning of a show. Hopefully this is a bug that'll be fixed?**If you're looking to use this outside of your home (which I was hoping to now and again) you HAVE to pay for a subscription. They take remote capability away completely after the free trial is up. I was not aware of this and did not see anything about it in the reading until I was digging for it on the website. It is there, just buried underneath everything else the paid subscription offers.*If you plan to cancel the paid subscription (which is the free trial) once it's over, they will charge your card 2 days prior to the date. I only caught it because of my bank declining it as a fraudulent charge from Canada. It took 2 emails to their support, after they attempted 3 times in 2 days to charge my card, to cancel my subscription.

First off - I think several different Tablo products are lumped together in the reviews - this is a review for the Tablo DUAL 64GB, specifically.This product does THREE things, and does them well.First, it's an tuner, for an antenna. Plug in your antenna (not cable) and whatever channels you can get Over-The-Air in your area, it will pick up. As a dual-tuner, it can tune to two different channels simultaneously. What it does NOT have, is an HDMI out - it's tuning to those channels, but not connected directly anywhere else. That's where the next two features come in.Second, this is a DVR. You can pause live TV while you're watching. It works reasonably well without paying the $5/month or $150/lifetime subscription, but it's definitely better if you pay the fee. You'll want to review the feature list to see what's included without paying the fee - but even without the fee you can manually look at what's on that day, and pick a show to record. If you want the recording to run long, you'll have to pick the NEXT show to record, too, and remember which one to switch to (the monthly fee lets you add time when you set up the recording). There are a few things like that, where it works okay without the fee but is just a bit better with it. I suggest trying both.One drawback on the DVR - the fast-forward and reverse controls are limited to a 30-second skip ahead and a 20-second skip back (or you can drop out to a menu to start over). You can key up a bunch of those - hit forward 10 times quickly without waiting for it to catch up to skip ahead 5 minutes - but you won't see preview frames of what you're skipping while you do that. There's no "show everything at 10x speed" option - just that 30 second skip. [see update at the end]The third feature, and I saved the best for last, is that this is a streaming device - but unlike most streaming devices you buy, that let you stream content from Amazon or Sling or Hulu or YouTube to them (which this does NOT support), the Tablo device *IS* the streaming source. Plug it into your home network (I have an ethernet cable connecting it directly to our router - television and game consoles are similarly connected) and you can stream it to anything else connected to your network. Throw in the subscription, and you can stream from anywhere with an internet connection.This is the primary way to watch output from this device (I found an Android app that also lets you copy saved recordings from the Tablo to your Android device, to watch without a connection, but that's not a supported feature by Tablo itself). I've used the Tablo app on my phone (Android), laptop (Windows 10), television (LG), and XBox One, and it works great. You do need to adjust your expectations a little - as some people have said, changing channels isn't an instant experience. How long it takes seems to depend on the quality of reception, the speed of your network connection to the device, the streaming quality you defined, and possible on the power of the client you're using, as well. I get astounding results when it's a wired connection (Tablo and target both connected to router via ethernet cable) - very high picture quality (set to highest streaming setting offered), good sound, responsive controls, no complaints. It's a little more awkward the more you throw into the mix - streaming over the Internet (requires that subscription fee) to my phone worked well, but sometimes skipping back or ahead took longer than I'd like, but the picture quality was still astonishingly good. The guide - even the free version - is more responsive than the one built into my LG TV.All in all, if you want what makes this great - the ability to stream through your house or over the Internet - then this is a great purchase for the price. You might be able to do a little better if you're willing to pay a lot more - but it will be a LITTLE better, for a LOT more. This works great, and so long as Tablo hangs around to continue to support their product, their model for selling subscriptions is a lot more customer-friendly than their competitors. The fact that this is reasonably functional even without a subscription is a good sign that they care about their customers, too. I've only had it for a weekend of football so far, but I'm thrilled.UPDATE, A FEW MONTHS IN (JAN 2019):I've tried this both with and without the subscription, on a variety of different devices, and have a few things to add.1. Your experience may vary wildly based on WHAT DEVICE YOU USE. I haven't used a Roku, which seems to be the device best supported - but the app on my LG TV and the one on my XBox One are okay, while the "Tablo Preview" app on my Android TV devices seems much better. Different devices have different skip intervals - some devices skip ahead 30 seconds, while others skip 10 seconds. I wish the app was more consistent across devices, but it's not.2. Speaking of consistency, the Surround Sound support is all-or-nothing. If you turn it on and try to watch on a device that doesn't support surround sound (in the Tablo app, whether or not the hardware you're using supports it), then you get no audio it all. Switching it back doesn't help - where the flag was when you recorded it is what matters. It won't transcode the audio to stereo for you. That means I leave it turned off, unfortunately.3. Recordings work differently after they're recorded than skipping while it's recording. Record a show and start watching it when the recording is done, and when you go to skip you could see a row of freeze-frames across the bottom of the screen of each skip point, which makes coming in after the ads a lot easier. It doesn't show those freeze-frames when you're skipping ahead while the show is still recording - you have to start after the recording is complete.4. Recently I've had trouble with the remote streaming functionality, as it doesn't seem to want to let me reset it to a lower quality, which means I can't get enough bandwidth to actually watch anything without insane stuttering. I'm hoping that's a glitch I can fix, and not a permanent issue.As I'm learning the quirks, I'm appreciating what it can do even more, though I'm slightly annoyed at some limitations. It's still worth 4/5 stars - it's a really amazing piece of tech if you watch live TV at all, and don't want to pay through the nose to cable providers (AND live in an area where an antenna can pull in channels - I use a powered antenna attached to my unused chimney, and it works great most of the time).

Really surprised with how well this product works. I have had it a few months now and I have an antenna external to my home. This product receives the channels and converts them to a WiFi signal which I use to distribute to 4 ROKU TVs in my house. It has enough memory unless I get lazy about deleting old programs. I did add an external drive, but ended up not really needing that. I like being able to watch TV when my internet goes out plus the local news is great, too. It uses data bandwidth in my WiFi network, but doesn't impact the internet data rates to the outside world so gaming and other internet functions aren't impacted in my setup. We pay the extra $5 a month for the TV listings which makes setting the DVR to record much simpler and it is worth it. The only thing I don't like is in the set up - it will sometimes tell you a channel is coming in strong, but when you try to watch it - you get a weak signal indication and no reception. I am an electrical engineer and I surmise this is likely due to the TV signal reflecting off buildings and coming in to interfere with itself (multi-path interference). The designers seem to use signal strength to measure a signal rather than data quality.

I'm now using this product for few weeks. I'm using Amazon 4K stick to access tablo and so far everything works well. Product is easy to use and reliable. My only complaint is about TV guide subscription fee which is too high for what you get. TV guide is broadcast free over the air. Tablo limit the TV guide to one day to sell more monthly subscription. Cord cutter rule is to reduce monthly subscription. I understand all business must make money but limiting what is free to force monthly subscription is kind of annoying. I'm welling to pay a minimum fee for additional usefull feature but 5.99US a month for a TV guide is high. I'm paying almost the same amount to be an Amazon prime member which give me free one day shopping, acess to movie and music.

The Tablo Dual OTA DVR is absolutely the most impressive purchase I've made for quite some time.From the easy setup to the exceptionally designed user interface and iOS application, this has truly changed our ability to watch OTA TV when we want and where we want.Kudos to Ottawa, Canada based tech company Nuvyyo on an excellent product!

Really pleased. it does exactly what it is advertised for. Easy and quick to setup, great quality, I'm using it with Roku Stick + on my TV sets.Tablo do improve with what seems to be regular updates.

It's ok but they need to fix Chromecast. Videos recorded that have signal issues will studded big time on playback where high quality signals play flawlessly. I wish tablo really dug into this and fixed it.

This is a great product. I highly recommend it!