Review on 📺 Tablo Dual LITE DVR for Cord Cutters - WiFi, Live TV Streaming, Commercial Skip - Black [TDNS2B-01-CN] by Jeremy Edwards

This is my second Tablo Dual. I've had a Tablo Dual 64 (with 64GB of onboard storage) in my main house for about three years. I recently purchased this Tablo Dual Lite (requires external hard drive) for my Florida winter home. For a cable cutter that receives TV wirelessly, these are the best DVRs I've found. Here are some of its strengths: * Connects to TV antenna and router (wired or wireless). For convenience, I use a wired connection to my router. After that, I can watch live and recorded TV on any Smart TV in my house. My TVs are either Roku TV or Fire Stick, all connected to Wi-Fi. It is not necessary to lay an antenna cable to every television. With tablos, TVs don't have to be close to the device. This makes it much easier to move the TV as there are no boxes or cables other than the AC power connection.* The program guide is very well organized with logical navigation. To browse the channels while ignoring the manual, I can press the up arrow on the Fire or Roku remote and scroll through the channel number to easily switch between programs. * The auto-skip ads feature is awesome. It's not available for all shows, but if a show is eligible, a timeline will be displayed showing where commercials were found (from the Tablo server) and the player will automatically skip them while watching them for quick determination Jump parts of the show. Skip ads and more.* I can watch live and recorded shows on my smartphone or laptop from anywhere. You must first use these devices to connect to Tableau on the same local network. Once this is done, they will be "paired" with your device to enable remote viewing. When setting up remote viewing, you can set the bit rate for this feature. If you want to save your cellular bandwidth and don't care too much about the picture quality, you can lower your speed to 500 kbps. You can set it higher for better remote HD quality.* You can also adjust the bandwidth for live recording and viewing on your local network. I find 3 Mbps to be good HD quality, but you can increase it if you want. The recording bit rate affects the number of recording hours on disk. The image quality is very good for my purposes. Yes, units compress video. Purists may want to split the antenna signal and watch OTA directly with the TV's tuner if that's a problem.* Dual tuners allow you to watch or record two different channels (on different TVs), or watch one channel while watching another record, etc. There are only two of us in our family, so a model with two tuners is enough. A large family may want a 4 tuner model. In fact, in our setup we have a dual tuner in Florida and a dual tuner in our main house, and we can access Tablo from anywhere, so technically we have four tuners!* You can watch one recorded program while recording two . other programs with the DVR.* I prefer the Tablo Preview app to the standard Tablo app. On a Fire Stick, it loads instantly and you don't have to wait for "sync". The default application will take some time to sync if you just started it. Some other things you should know. We pay $49.99 per year for the program guide. I think it's a pretty good deal as it also enables auto-ads skipping, remote access, and a 14-day guide. It is possible to work without a paid service, but you can only schedule 24 hours in advance or record via the tuner/timer settings. I don't mind paying for a guide, especially since it helps keep Tablo profitable. (My previous DVR was the "Simple TV" brand, similar to Tablo. However, when that company closed their doors, my device became useless. I recommend buying from a company that will continue to exist and provide ongoing support. A modest fee has been charged won't hurt.) The tuners in both of my Tablo Duals are pretty good. They pick up channels that in some cases don't scan on my TVs. A minor complaint is that they only show the virtual channel number and not the actual HF channel. Therefore, when the WNBC-4 transmits on RF channel 36, it is cataloged as CH4. The geek in me would prefer to show both the real channel and the virtual channel. Without this information, you don't really know if you're receiving VHF or UHF frequencies, which require different antenna types. This device does not support QAM cable channels. Air TV only. As far as I can tell, the main difference between the Dual 64 and Dual Lite is 64GB of onboard storage. You can always add 64 more storage by adding a hard drive, but I've never come close to filling it as I regularly delete programs I watch. I would buy a second 64 but the price of the Lite was much more attractive. I also noticed that my Dual 64 is made in Canada and my Dual Lite is made in China. The devices appear to be physically identical, but the Dual Lite requires a 1.5 amp supply while the 64 requires a 1.0 amp supply. Each device comes with a power adapter.