Tablo Blog

Now Available: Advanced Recording Features for Tablo OTA DVRs

January 25, 2018

Updated March 17, 2021

The Tablo team has been in the dev lab at Nuvyyo HQ working on a secret project that we hope Tablo customers will be very excited about... Advanced recording features! 

All Tablo Over-the-Air DVRs can now enjoy more flexible scheduling and recording management capabilities on your favorite Tablo apps.

What’s New
Advanced Recording Features include highly requested recording management tools including:

Adjust Start/Stop Times for Recordings

You can now set recordings on episodes or full series to start up to 10 mins early and end as much as 3 hours after the scheduled program end-time.

This is especially useful for shows scheduled after events that typically run long like sports, or when certain broadcasts regularly begin a minute or two early.

Keep X Recordings

Ideal for programs that air frequently like talk shows, game shows, and the news, you can now preset your Tablo OTA DVR to retain all recorded episodes, or only the most recent five, three, or single airings (plus any protected recordings).
*** Update - Keep 10 & 20 options have been added! ***

Recording Channel Selector

Handy for those who live in between two broadcast areas, or on the Canada-US border, you can now choose which channel Tablo will record from if multiple channels are airing your favorite program.

This flexibility helps resolve recording conflicts, and allows you to override Tablo’s smart scheduling (which automatically chooses the channel with the best signal quality) so you can specify the source broadcaster for each of your shows.

Adjust start/stop times for recordings and the recording channel selector features are available for both individual airings and series recordings (ALL or ALL NEW).

As you can imagine, keep X recordings is available only on series recordings.

How To Access New Features

Access to all new features requires an active Tablo TV Guide Data Service subscription (or in-progress free trial), Tablo firmware (2.2.18+), and the latest Tablo apps.

Supported Tablo Apps

Advanced recording options are available within most Tablo apps including those for:

• Roku
• Amazon Fire TV
• Android TV 
• Apple TV
• LG webOS
• Samsung TIZEN
• iOS & Android mobile devices
• PC/MAC
• Tablo DUAL HDMI & Tablo QUAD HDMI interface

Advanced Recording FAQs

Since these new advanced recording features affect the default scheduling functionality of Tablo OTA DVRs, there are a few changes our loyal Tablo customers might notice.

• Why do my recordings no longer have 5 minutes of extra time?
  On firmware prior to 2.2.18, if a tuner was available, Tablo began recordings 60 seconds before and ended them 5 minutes after the scheduled air time.
  
  Now, recordings set to start and stop ‘On Time’ will start 15 seconds before and end 1 minute after the scheduled air time.
  
  
• I have ‘Extend Live Recordings’ checked in my settings screen. How will this affect recordings that I choose to extend by adjusting the stop time?
  Unless you specifically change the ‘Stop Recording’ time of an airing or series, the ‘Extend Live Recordings’ feature will continue to automatically extend recording of all airings marked as ‘live’ in your Tablo’s guide data by 50%, up to 2 hours.
  
  
  
• What is the behavior of Keep X Recordings feature on older recordings? How does Tablo decide which recordings to delete?
  If you select a ‘Keep’ setting and you currently have more completed recordings in that series than the limit you just set, older recordings will be deleted when the setting is enabled, unless you select cancel.
  
  (TIP - this is a great way to quickly delete some but not all recordings from a particular series!) 
  
  
  Keep X recording limits are also based on completed recordings, so if a recording fails due to poor reception or another issue, it will not count towards your limit and Tablo will maintain the oldest completed recording until the limit is reached at which time it’s replaced with the newer completed recording.
  
  Keep X will also override Tablo's Auto Delete function. Auto delete helps manage your Tablo's recording storage by deleting the oldest unprotected recordings to maintain enough space for upcoming scheduled recordings. Users with smaller hard drives who make frequent use of Keep X on recording schedules should carefully monitor available storage space to avoid recordings being deleted before they're able to be viewed, or running out of disk space altogether.   

We hope you enjoy these new Tablo features!

If you have any questions about the updates or would like to leave feedback, join the conversation on our Tablo Community.