We “cut the cord’ around 17 years ago. When we moved into our current house in 2006, the neighborhood was new and cable wasn’t yet available so we had Dish TV installed. By the time our contract was up 1 year later, Charter cable was available and we switched. But after 2 years, the bill increased significantly so I cancelled the service and installed a rooftop antenna to receive over-the-air broadcast programming.
I purchased an HP Pavilion computer from Circuit City (just before they closed) that had a TV tuner and ran Windows XP with Windows Media Center. This worked great for 6 or 7 years. It had a free TV guide and DVR capabilities for no additional costs. But once that computer began having issues and could not be updated, we switched to a TiVo because it was easier to operate and more reliable. But there was a monthly subscription that I wasn’t keen to pay.
In 2018 I discovered the Recast from Amazon. This was a one-time purchase that worked very similarly to the TiVo but without any recurring costs. This has worked pretty well for the past 8 years, but it requires an Amazon Fire Cube or Fire Stick to view content from the Recast. I prefer the Apple TV over the Amazon devices for the other streaming services we use, so we were having to switch between the Apple and Amazon boxes, depending on what we wanted to watch.
Recently I learned about the Tablo device and decided to replace the Recast. This has worked out great. It was easy to setup, has picked up over 50 local stations in the St Louis market, and has an Apple TV app! No more switching input sources. There are also iPhone and iPad apps, which have proven to be much more reliable than the Fire TV app offered by Amazon to stream Recast content to mobile devices. And the big win is being able to watch live or recorded content, like Notre Dame and Chicago Bears football games, on my Apple Vision Pro. I mostly prefer to watch recordings of sporting events so I can forward through commercials and commentary. I think golf tournaments will also be fun to watch on the AVP. The only negative thing I have found is you cannot stream from your Tablo while away from home because your mobile device must be connected to the same network as the Tablo. So next I’ll need to have Caleb help me setup a VPN so the Tablo will see my mobile device as trying to connect locally when I’m away from home.
The Tablo has been a great upgrade to our occasional TV viewing options.