Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This would be a great product if it actually performed as advertised. I've had two of these units, the first one failed almost immediately, and the second one failed after a month. Aside from the marginal hardware, there are too many lame things about the Tablo. The following are my top 10 lame things about the Tablo DVR: 10. Inadequate control over recordings. Unlike every other DVR, with a Tablo you cannot configure how many recordings to keep of a particular show. This means I need to go back and do a lot of manual deleting. 9. Must use 720p on Roku. I was told by Tablo support that this is a problem with the Roku device. Considering the number of channels on a Roku that operate at 1080p, I find it highly unlikely that the Roku is at fault. 8. Unreliable remote access. Remote access fails on a regular basis and I will need to stop and start the remote feature to get it working again. This is something I usually can’t do if I am away from home and want to access my Tablo. Also, unless you have previously synced a device within your home network, you can’t connect that device remotely. This means I cannot remotely access the Tablo from another computer. 7. Poor software development. Came out with a new Roku preview channel a few months ago. In many ways the preview channel is worse than the original. They have yet to make any improvements on the preview channel. About a year ago they said they were working on a way to get recordings off the Tablo device and on to a PC. Still waiting for this. 6. Poor hardware development. Despite numerous problems, there has not been any improvements to the hardware since the device first came out. 5. Uses USB2 interface for external drive. USB2? Really? I don’t know of any product that still uses USB2 instead of USB3. Another thing that adds to the performance issues. 4. Needs to be connected to an external drive, even for live TV. Considering the price of RAM, I don’t know why they decided to use the usb drive to buffer live TV. This just adds to the overall performance issues. 3. Needs to be connected to the Internet to work. So if your Internet connection goes down you can’t watch live or recorded TV? 2. Poor product support. Apparently they have only one guy who will answer product support questions. 1. Runs hot. Really hot. This is the most likely reason that Tablo units start failing after a month or so and is a sure sign of a badly designed product. This issue should have been corrected long ago.