642 Days Waiting for a Simple OTA DVR with Built-in Streaming
Ever since Aereo online TV service was suspended in June 2014, I have been striving to replicate the simplicity and reliability of that service. This past week,
I found the answer. TabloTV
So in a nutshell what Aereo provided was the ability to record HD TV that is broadcast in your city, and for you to play that recording anywhere. Whether that be on a TV, with a streaming player like Roku, or on your laptop, tablet or phone. Just select the show you want to record, and watch at your convenience.
Back in June, 2014, to replace the Aereo service, I constructed an assortment of gear to try to replicate the service. Let me list the items and what they were used for:
Channel Master DVR with external hard drive – used to capture Over the Air (OTA) HD TV signals and record them to disk
Slingbox 500 – used to be able to stream the recorded TV content to supported devices such as Roku and iPad
An assortment of other hardware to deal with wiring and convenience, such as
HDMI transmitter and receiver (for the 2nd TV in the bedroom)
Second router, to segment some of the Roku boxes on another network that I didn’t want to stream the Slingbox to
The reason that I had all that other stuff in number 3 above, was that the way Slingbox transmits to a Roku to view recordings on your TV, is through an iPad or iPhone. This is a crazy setup, where you have to connect to the Slingbox via your iPhone, then push the video to the Roku, in a similar way to AirPlay. Everything had to sync perfectly, including the little IR emitters from the Slingbox to the Channel Master DVR for remote control.
The bottom line is that the above was a wieldy process, that worked, maybe most of the time.
Now here we are in 2016, and I have been doing the above for a year and a half. What happens? My Slingbox stops being able to control the DVR for some reason. I spent hours trying to figure out why. I tried using other IR blasters.I updated the Slingbox firmware. I did a complete reinstall. I looked at the IR blaster with my camera to see if it was working (it was btw). Nothing I tried worked, which meant, that I couldn’t use the remote feature on the Slingbox to pick my recording to play or change the channel.
And of course, my Slingbox was out of warranty and it seemed from their online support site, they wanted $30 just to talk to you. Fail.
So, I googled “Slingbox alternative”. Read some reviews and decided that I should try a TabloTV. All the specs looked good. Plus they didn’t make you buy a subscription to their online guide. They have a free version, so I thought the risk was low to try it.
I ordered the Tablo box from Amazon and it arrived in 2 days. For the record, I choose the 2 tuner version, because it was a little less money than the 4 tuner, and I really never exceeded 2 shows at a time recording with my Channel Master, as I also have Hulu, for most of the other TV content.
Ok, so I rip everything out from the old setup. You can see it here in this picture, it’s quite an assortment of stuff.
I proceed to plug in the Tablo. Power, Cable connection to my existing antenna, 500GB USB hard drive that I had and an existing Ethernet cable that was used with the old Slingbox.
I had the Tablo app up on my iPhone, and proceeded to set up the TabloTV box. Because, my iPhone is on the same network, it saw it immediately. It prompted me to format the drive. Then, scanned my local TV stations and downloaded the guide.
This was a super easy process that took at most 15 minutes. I am impressed. You can see the TabloTV box in my entertainment center here.
Now, I start looking around the Tablo UI on my iPhone, and I find it very easy to setup new recordings, and navigate to see what I can record. I actually was so impressed with the Tablo UI/Guide, that I opted in for the lifetime subscription, on the second day of ownership (they do give you a 30 day trial to check out all the features). It is well worth the money.
In summary, I now have the ability to easily view all of my recorded content on any device. The Roku viewing is native Roku, just like with Hulu. The browser view on my laptop is very fast and beautiful picture on my 27 inch extended laptop monitor. Plus, (and you have to enable this feature in the settings) I can watch everything remotely on my iPad or iPhone, over the Internet.
It only took 642 days of waiting!
