Although TiVo may be moving on, Canadian startup Nuvyyo is doubling down on Tablo with a spiffy new network tuner. The Tablo Dual OTA DVR ($250) features a significantly smaller, redesigned fanless enclosure. But that’s not the real story here. By integrating 64GB of flash storage, all customers now start with up to 40 hours of antenna TV recording capacity. Combined with exclusive Best Buy retail availability, the company is clearly attempting to push this product into the mainstream. Beyond the aforementioned bundled storage, Tablo Dual features comparable internals to its predecessors (which will coexist) — Tablo continues to tune performance and expand the ecosystem of streaming apps capable of receiving both live and recorded over-the-air video. Plus owners can still simply expand storage via an external USB drive and cloud DVR options remain on the roadmap. To maximize the experience, most folks will want the $50/yr subscription for two weeks of guide data… which is a much more palatable number than what TiVo requires. While the ‘headless’ tuner doesn’t neatly fit into the traditional set-top DVR paradigm, like Channel Master’s solution, it certainly offers a more modern and flexible approach… that others like Channels (Apple TV) and Plex have (Android TV) similarly undertaken.
View Comments
Priced at $250 for only two tuners, I would have expected to get Lifetime guide data. Or at least a couple years guide data thrown in.
Unfortunately, guide data is not inexpensive (Channels DVR charges $8/mo for comparison, to include DVR sw development, and TiVo charges $15/mo although often uses it to help subsidize hw but now owns the guide data) and the transcoding hardware required for this sort of solution is much pricier than the off-the-shelf parts a pure streamer like Roku can roll with. Somewhat equivalent HDHomeRun Extend hw (now also fanless) is cheaper than Tablo but doesn't include wireless, many "good" apps, nor 64GB of storage. The periodic Roamio OTA deals (with Lifetime) represent the best OTA DVR value, but you give up some of that flexibility as there's no Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, etc output - so you're going to pay on one end (for a TiVo Mini) or the other I guess. I also think their positioning is that even at $250 plus $50/yr, it's much less than cable TV and box rentals. I bet over time the original 2-tuner box is phased out and this one drops in price.
By the by, Tablo advertises on the site (banner towards the upper right) - but the financial relationship does not extend to coverage considerations.
There have been some growing pains for Tablo, but I'm pretty happy with mine. I left TiVo OTA because the rumored Roku app never materialized. The Mini is fantastic head unit, but the expandibility is extremely limited (must be hard wired) and expensive.
I hope this new unit represents a refinement of the hardware if not a complete overhaul. The thing gets as hot as the surface of the sun, but the vents and fanless design must mean they've solved some of those heat issues. They also still need to refine the UI. I don't have issues with it, but if you have a lot of OTA channels, the time it takes to load channel data and tune to a channel makes it unlikely to find mass market appeal. And finally, the accuracy and useability of the TiVo fast forwarding and rewinding through recorded shows is just unparalleled. I hope Tablo can get there one day.