Is Tablo right for you? You’ve heard the buzz and read the expert reviews, but sometimes it helps to hear the Tablo Success Story from real Tablo customers to know if this is the right solution for you.
Our blog series, “How I Cut the Cord with Tablo” features Q&A style interviews with our Tablo OTA DVR customers, focusing on how they’ve cut the cord on cable to save money while enjoying a whole-home DVR experience using Tablo.
Whether you’re still on the fence about cutting the cord or you’re just looking for tips and tricks on how to improve your cord cutting setup, we hope you’ll find these cord cutting success stories helpful.
Why did you cut the cord? How much money are you saving each month?
We were, like so many others, numb to the high-cost of (popular Canadian provider) Rogers Cable service for many, many years. We were afraid to ‘cut the cord’, thinking that the high cost of cable was the only way to get good programing and HD content. After a truly horrible customer service incident in November 2013 we decided to cancel our Rogers service. We installed a roof mount HD antenna but still hadn’t found a reliable OTA DVR solution. Shortly thereafter Tablo was introduced to the market. Our savings for cutting the cord is $65.83 per month ($790 per year).
What do you get with an HDTV antenna that you couldn’t get another way?
We get all of the benefits of the basic cable package we had with our provider. But, we were delighted to find a couple of US (Buffalo-based) OTA channels that feature a lot of classic sitcoms. Another benefit was the increase in picture quality from our rooftop antenna. Plus, we can enjoy OTA content in any room in the house (or when travelling, with Tablo Connect). We couldn’t get free content everywhere in the house with Rogers cable. Rogers wanted to charge an additional monthly fee for each extra room cable was supplied to. With Tablo and OTA, we not only get free content everywhere in the house… we get it, for free, everywhere we travel (where internet access is available).
Why did you choose Tablo as part of your home entertainment arsenal?
Sadly, the first OTA digital recorder we tried didn’t perform well at all. In our search to find a stable and reliable OTA DVR solution, we read about Tablo . . . It was apparent that Tablo had so many ground-breaking benefits and features over an old-fashioned style time-shifting recorder that we just had to have one. The original two-tuner model ushered in a whole new way of watching, recording and enjoying TV in a way that provides access at home and away! We soon realized that the two-tuner model was not enough and we bought the four-tuner version too!
What’s been the best thing about using/having Tablo so far?
The best features of the Tablo for us are:
- The ease of navigating the UI to schedule and play back recordings
- The ability to watch local news while traveling
- The ability to watch recorded programs while traveling
- The ability to schedule new programs to be recorded while traveling
- The ability to access Tablo from anywhere using all of our devices, from smartphones to our big screen TV.
What other services and tools do you use to watch TV/Video content and why?
We use an Android TV box to stream Tablo content to our large screen TV.* The Android TV box also allows us to get additional web content. We also have Chromecast, which we mostly use for streaming from our tablet to TV while traveling. For us, using the Android Tablo Web App (from the Google Play store) through the Android TV Box has been flawless.
What advice do you have for others thinking of cutting the cord?
We would advise anyone who is considering cutting the cord to get a good roof-top antenna if they can. It’s not difficult to get an antenna set up to bring in free HD programming. Once the effort has been made to bring in OTA signals, you are ready to enjoy the independence from monthly cable bills! We were reluctant to cut our ties with Rogers, but we did and we’re never going back to cable again. Free OTA HD programming, paired with Tablo, is the best solution for us.
“You only get what you pay for” is definitely not the case with Tablo. We get more value with free over-the-air programming paired with Tablo and all of the features Tablo offers than we did with our Rogers subscription.
With Tablo we get improved picture quality, super-easy recording and playback of HD content, access to live programing (and recordings) anywhere we travel, the flexibility of being able to watch live TV and recordings on our big 65” TV, smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer. Cutting the cord opened up a whole new and better way of enjoying TV while saving big bucks too!
*NOTE – A dedicated app for Android TV will be ready in Q1 2015. In the meantime, some users like Tim & Ian are using the downloadable web-based Android app on Android TV in conjunction with a USB/Bluetooth mouse for navigation.
If you’re already enjoying your Tablo OTA DVR, remember to post a review of your DVR on the online store where you purchased your unit and let your fellow TV Lovers your Tablo Success Story.
If you’d like to participate in the ‘How I cut the cord with Tablo’ blog series, drop us a line at info@tablotv.com. We’d love to hear your Tablo Success Story.
