Nuvyyo. The company name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But the company with the silly name actually makes some pretty cool products to appeal to cord-cutters, looking to sever their ties with their cable or satellite TV provider. The company offers a two-tuner ($219) and a four-tuner ($299) over-the-air DVR (Digital Video Recorder). These products, branded the much less silly name "Tablo," offer live viewing of HD broadcast TV as well as recording and playback of your local network broadcasts.
At the 2015 CES in Las Vegas, a new Tablo has been unveiled: the Tablo METRO ($249). It's an advanced two-tuner over-the-air DVR with dual fractal antennas built-in, so you won't need an ugly pair of rabbit ears to pull in those local channels. The Tablo METRO is intended for metropolitan locations where the viewer is fairly close to local broadcast towers (less than 25 miles). The METRO also includes a coax port in case you choose to hook it up to an external antenna.
Like its antenna-free brothers, the Tablo METRO pulls in local HD and digital broadcasts and allows you to schedule recordings or watch live streams of your local channels from anywhere in your house, or virtually anywhere in the world. There are Tablo apps for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac as well as channels or apps for popular over the top streaming platforms such as Roku, Android TV, Apple TV and (coming soon) Amazon Fire TV.
For best results, you'll want to pony up some extra money for the premium guide ($5/month or $150 for a lifetime subscription). This gives you the ability to program and store series recordings, see nice thumbnail graphics for shows and sort the guide a number of different ways based on the enhanced meta data in the premium guide.
In terms of setting the device up for use, all Tablo METRO DVRs ship without a hard drive, so you'll need to purchase a USB hard drive to store your shows. Tablo currently supports drives up to two terabytes in site (2TB) but is working to expand that to 4 TB. Aso, Tablo works through your home network so it doesn't need to be connected to, or even placed near a TV. As long as your Tablo can receive signals from your local ATSC broadcast antenna or antennas, it will happily start receiving live broadcasts and storing recordings. Also, because all Tablo DVRs include built-in WiFi, you won't need to plug it into a network cable. This means you can place the Tablo up in a high place in your home where it will have the best chance of receiving TV broadcasts and it will connect with devices in your home (and to the Internet) wirelessly via your home network router.
Once you have the device configured for your local stations and the channels added (a one-time set-up), you can start watching TV via the Tablo app or channel on your mobile device or over-the-top streaming box.
The Tablo METRO is expected to begin shipping in March of 2015 for $249.99. Tablo is now accepting pre-orders via their web site.
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