Tablo Gen 4 vs. AirTV 2 Broadcast TV DVR Comparison

Hey, this is Brian from Disabled MyCable.com

And today I'm going to do a comparison between the Tableau, Gen 4 DVR, and the Air TV 2 DVR

Now, these are both broadcast TV DVRs, which means you connect an antenna to them, and they record shows and movies that you get over broadcast TV

They both can store recordings on an external USB hard drive, and you watch live TV and your recordings using

an app, such as a Roku app or an iPhone app on a separate device for both of these products

So let's talk about the similarities between these two, because they're both very good products

and they have a lot of features in common. So first of all, both feature a free channel guide

with no subscription. I find that to be very important because I find like the whole point of

broadcast TV is to not pay a fee for a channel guide. So for me, that's kind of a must

Both have good tuners that pick up a lot of channels. I got about the same number of channels on both devices

Both also offer free streaming channels that come over the internet. Now I'm not a huge fan of those

I don't really watch a lot of those. I like the broadcast channels, but they're there if you want them

Both offer Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections so that you can have a wired connection to your router or wireless

Both offer two tuners so that you can watch one channel while recording another Both work only in the United States and neither offers manual recording Manual recording is when you set the day and time manually

Now, most people will want to do the automatic method where you just click on the show, but there are some people who like the manual way of setting it

and that's not available in either of these boxes. Now, let's talk about the advantages of the Tableau Gen 4

So first and foremost, I believe it has a much better, user interface and that is mainly exhibited by the fast forwarding and

rewinding behavior. So this is a recording that I made with the tablo gen 4 and I'm

just jumping around forward and backward and dragging the timeline forward and

backward and you can see how responsive it is. There isn't any lag whatsoever. It

makes it really great for skipping past commercials. The air TV just cannot do it like

this. It's very laggy. It takes several seconds when you jump around. I also really like the

ability to search for upcoming TV shows and movies by genre, and that's only available in the

Tableau. It makes it really easy to find upcoming movies that you want to find, let's say

science fiction movies that you want to record, and it's just a really great feature. The

table also comes with 128 gigabytes of internal storage, which comes out to about 50 hours of storage

that because you can start using the device and recording right out of the box

You don't have to hunt around for a USB hard drive. Now having said that, the Air TV has a version with internal hard drive called Air TV Anywhere

So if you want that with the Air TV platform you can get that and it just costs a little bit more Now the Tableau Gen 4 I found works with a larger number of hard drives

I was able to just plug in hard drives that I had lying around, and they worked with the tablo

Whereas with air TV, it's very picky about hard drives. It would not work with some of the older hard drives I had

And so that's another consideration. In addition, Tableau can record up to 8 terabytes

on an external hard drive, whereas Air TV can only record two terabytes

Another advantage of Tablo is that it can record streaming channels, which is pretty cool

Now, that actually might make me want to watch more streaming shows because I like to be able to

record them to be able to skip through the commercials. So for me, being able to record them, that's pretty cool

And last, but not least for Tablo, is customer service. If you go to their website, you can find their customer service number, and you can

can talk with a human being. I just tried this a few weeks ago and I was talking with

the human being within minutes and I actually submitted a bug report which they actually fixed

in the subsequent software release. So Tableau has good customer support and they're still actively

working on releasing new software versions. Whereas with Air TV, I wasn't able to find a customer

service number on their website. If you're able to find it, please leave it in the comments

So with all these great features for Tableau, you might be wondering, why would I want to buy an

air TV? Well, it has one killer feature that the tableau doesn't have. With air TV, you can watch

your recordings when you away from home So if you for example bring up the air TV or the Sling iPhone app when you traveling you can watch a show that you recorded on your air TV or you can even watch live TV like a local sports event that you

would otherwise miss when you're away from home. So if you travel and you want that ability

to watch recordings and live local TV when you're away from home, air TV is the way to go

The older version of the tableau had that ability, but unfortunately the new one does not

Now, they've said it's because their uncompressed video format takes a lot of bandwidth

That's not ideal for mobile viewing when you're away from your home network

So it's not out of the question that they won't do it again, but right now it doesn't have it

and I probably wouldn't hold my breath for them to add that feature anytime soon

Now, the other advantage that Air TV has is that it works on a lot more apps, such as Apple TV

and it even works. There's a browser, a web app, that you can watch your recordings on your computer

Right now, as of the time I'm recording this video, there's no Apple TV app for the Tablo Gen 4

and there's no web app for it, so you can't watch it in a browser. But they're working on those

and I believe that they will come out pretty soon. By the time you watch this video

they might already be out. So that's my summary of the differences

and pros and cons. of the Tableau and Air TV. I hope this video was helpful for you

I have a complete review of each of these units on my website, disablemycable.com

If this video was useful for you, please like it and subscribe

Thanks a lot