2021-11-16, 07:22 PM
About a month ago I was reading about a network tuner for American and Canadian users called the Tablo https://www.tablotv.com/ and I saw one on ebay at a good price so I ordered one. It turns out there is a pretty good deal now for Black Friday in the US and Canada, with refurbished dual tuners going for $60 With a 30 day return is definitely worth investigating for those that are interested.
It is very similar to the HDHomerun from SiliconDust which many of us use for ATSC tuning and it provides basic Live TV and optional DVR scheduling if you install a USB storage device. They have a subscription server to get the EPG too. There is web client and clients for Android and Roku.
For most of us that isn't very interesting since NextPVR already offers better Live TV and DVR features then the Tablo provides However I was able to get an Extra device working with the Tablo and it integrates quite well with NextPVR in my testing so far. The reason this is important is the Tablo unlike all other digital ATSC devices transcodes to H264 and AAC audio so the files can direct play in the NextPVR web client and on pretty much all phones and tables. RPi and Docker NextPVR servers that can't transcode ATSC should have no trouble with these devices.
A second advantage that people who record ATSC might appreciate, is that that the file size of mpeg2 recordings is quite large. The configurable bitrate of the H264 files will save from 1/2 to 1/8th of the OTA file size without any post-processing.
A third advance is 1080i is transcoded to 1080p or 720p. For devices like the RPi4 that can't as yet do h/w deinterlacing this can be quite important
I will be posting the Extra tuner shortly and for those of you who might have one of these device might be interested in having a look. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have too, I really do think these devices complement NextPVR very well.
Martin
It is very similar to the HDHomerun from SiliconDust which many of us use for ATSC tuning and it provides basic Live TV and optional DVR scheduling if you install a USB storage device. They have a subscription server to get the EPG too. There is web client and clients for Android and Roku.
For most of us that isn't very interesting since NextPVR already offers better Live TV and DVR features then the Tablo provides However I was able to get an Extra device working with the Tablo and it integrates quite well with NextPVR in my testing so far. The reason this is important is the Tablo unlike all other digital ATSC devices transcodes to H264 and AAC audio so the files can direct play in the NextPVR web client and on pretty much all phones and tables. RPi and Docker NextPVR servers that can't transcode ATSC should have no trouble with these devices.
A second advantage that people who record ATSC might appreciate, is that that the file size of mpeg2 recordings is quite large. The configurable bitrate of the H264 files will save from 1/2 to 1/8th of the OTA file size without any post-processing.
A third advance is 1080i is transcoded to 1080p or 720p. For devices like the RPi4 that can't as yet do h/w deinterlacing this can be quite important
I will be posting the Extra tuner shortly and for those of you who might have one of these device might be interested in having a look. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have too, I really do think these devices complement NextPVR very well.
Martin
