Sanity check from you cord cutters

[goeduck]

Tablo brings an antenna into ROKU nicely, it will appear just like Philo, Netflix or anything else on your ROKU home menu. It is not cheap however, and you need a 1 to 5 TB external USB storage drive on top of it on some (all?) models. Not sure. But it does broadcast out on WiFi so you can get the antenna stations on all of your TVs if you have more than one. The other thing to know is Tablo is best hard connected on an Ethernet cable to your WiFi router which for me meant running a new coax cable from the attic down the wall to where my cable modem/router is. All in all, I like the combination.

Round numbers were:
$100 antenna
$100 preamp (you may not need)
$140 Tablo Dual Lite (can feed 2 antenna channels)
$ 80 TB Drive 2TB

So over $300 to $400 but cry once.

 

[CMV]

Air TV is similar. AirTV Dual-tuner - the black one is what you'd want, not AirTV Player that's white & blue. It's about $100, streams one antenna feed to all your TVs, and has option to plug in an external HDD and use as a DVR. Limitation is that it will only stream to 2 separate devices at once.

IF you also have Sling, it adds your local stations into the guide and makes them look like they are part of your regular channel lineup - so it is very seamless with Sling. However, it does work and will just give OTA channels but w/o Sling subscription would have to set it up as a separate feed - you'd go to your OTA channels like you'd navigate to Netflix, Hulu, Roku Channel, etc.

Need same list of gadgets as above - antenna, external drive (if you want to record - works without), network cable to router, digital antenna...

 

[NorTracNY]

Interesting. So Tablo will cost me about $220, but AirTV is only about $100. I only have 1 TV that I care about. There's only 2 in the house. The one just has a raspberry pi and Amazon stick on it. The Amazon stick is only because we just got the Roku.

The thing I don't like hearing is that it's going to need an Ethernet connection to my router. I have the Roku Ultra so that takes up a spot, 2 PoE using two spots, and something else already.... I have to look to see if you have use a splitter on an ethernet port.

 

[IXLR8]

I want to be able to feed or broadcast the output of my Apple TV box to multiple TV's. Is there anything out there that will do that? None of my TV's have a wifi connection if it matters.

 

[CMV]

Interesting. So Tablo will cost me about $220, but AirTV is only about $100. I only have 1 TV that I care about. There's only 2 in the house. The one just has a raspberry pi and Amazon stick on it. The Amazon stick is only because we just got the Roku.

The thing I don't like hearing is that it's going to need an Ethernet connection to my router. I have the Roku Ultra so that takes up a spot, 2 PoE using two spots, and something else already.... I have to look to see if you have use a splitter on an ethernet port.

If only 1 TV, just do antenna direct to it & switch inputs. If you want a little more seamless like a Roku app, get the AirTV player that is white & blue - but read reviews first - many people dislike the withe & blue one. I have both. Bought the black one & sling gave the blue & white one. So the 2 TVs we watch are on the black one, the guest bedroom is on the white one and with its own antenna. But for just one TV, and wireless (other than antenna & power cord) the AirTV player works. Doubles as Roku kind of - really made for Sling & Netflix but can add other apps.

 

[goeduck]

Two learning opportunities for my wife today to cut down data use:
1. I noticed she was watching CBS Young and the Restless live through YouTube TV, I reminded her we get CBS via the antenna on Tablo which uses no data on the plan.
2. She left a Hallmark show streaming in the TV room while she was in the kitchen washing dishes. I reminded her to pause or exit when she does this. I did not watch but she may have backed up to replay what she missed. :banghead:

We are at 211 GB on the 8th and I have conflicting into on when the cap resets. A chat on line with Xfinity said the 15th of the month. A FAQ listing on Xfinity said the 1st of the month. My billing period which is the only thing that makes sense is the 23rd. I guess I will have to call or watch it every few days. My account says it is delayed up to 24 hours so who knows.

 

[Welshman]

I just installed my Channel Master antenna this weekend. The 22 stations come in perfectly! I got the Roku earlier. Next is to drop cable TV and get Philo for the channels the family want. Then either I'll need to get something for the antenna to work with the Roku (is that Tablo?) or I'll try to drop cable completely and try Ubifi.

Before you commit to Ubifi, look into OTRMobile. I'm in my second month with them and so far so good. $60./mo. unlimited, no caps, no throttling.

 

[goeduck]

We are at 211 GB on the 8th and I have conflicting into on when the cap resets. A chat on line with Xfinity said the 15th of the month. A FAQ listing on Xfinity said the 1st of the month. My billing period which is the only thing that makes sense is the 23rd. I guess I will have to call or watch it every few days. My account says it is delayed up to 24 hours so who knows.

The Xfinity data usage on my account updated to 223 GB today and on the screen I noticed it had the dates, the plan resets at the end of the month. At that rate we are using a little over 27 GB per day which would get me to a little shy of 900 GB in a month. Too close 1TB for me.... more work to do

 

[CMV]

142GB on the 5th....211GB on the 8th < 25GB/day and is a pace of just a little over 700 for a 31 day month.

But even at your 27GB # that's <850GB in a month. You'd have to be >32/day, every day to bump up to your cap...

Do you have ability with your services to "hide" channels? I can easily do with sling & assume there are ways with similar services. If so, you could "hide" any networks duplicated by your OTA choices so the default for those channels wouldn't be streaming.

Also, no idea if this changes amount of bandwidth a stream uses, but my Rokus wanted to default to 1080P for a 720p TV. I guess because it can upscale or convert it or whatever. But setting cable box or now Roku to 720p on a 720p native TV looks exactly the same as 1080p setting. So that might be an option too....if there's a TV that's mostly "listened to" from another room vs actually parked in front of watching, having it's Roku set at 720p might eat less bandwidth while it's on? Don't know how to measure, just saw I can set for either and for some TVs there is no difference in picture quality.

 

[CMV]

Here's an issue & workaround I found last night. You guys might not have this problem at all .....

1. Roku freezes up or starts lagging pretty bad. Previously I physically unplugged it from TV, plugged it back in, let it reboot, and it was fine. Found in the settings menu can just restart the Roku from the remote. Still take a minute to reboot, but that seemed to work, even when it was unresponsive, it would go to menu settings & allow a reboot from there.

2. Amazon prime shows audio kept getting out of sync. People's mouths would move but the words were about a second behind. Made everything kind of look like an old dubbed kung fu movie Pressing the * button on Roku remote brought up a side menu that had some audio choices like "night mode" or "movies". I switched that to just "stereo" and the audio was immediately back in sync & stayed that way. So that's something to mess with if you find audio keeps getting out of sync....