Tablo's recording scheduling relies on the TV Guide Data it downloads during its nightly maintenance routine. Those with 30-day free trials or active Tablo TV Guide Data Service subscriptions (optional) on legacy devices as well as all 4tgh generation Tablo devices, always have a 14-day moving window of guide data. Those without subscriptions on legacy devices will have 24 hours.
Those who don’t choose to subscribe can still set manual recordings for any date and time and are not limited to recordings within that 24-hour window.
There are 3 main types of recordings that you can set on legacy Tablo devices: one-time, series, and manual.
One-time Recordings (With an active TV Guide Data subscription)
1. To set a single episode of a TV series to record, select an airing from either the Live TV Grid or via the episode lists in the Guide screens.
2. Select Record
3. If needed, you can also apply Advanced Recording Options to a single airing once it is set to record.
One-Touch Series Recordings (With an active TV Guide Data subscription)
1. Select a show: either via the Live TV Grid guide or one of the filtered Guide screens.
2. Select Record
3. You will be presented with an option to record ALL Episodes or just NEW Episodes.
TIP - Looking to avoid recording re-runs? Choose ‘Record New’. Trying to amass a back catalog of a whole show? Choose ‘Record ALL’.
4. The series will now show an indicator that it is set to record.
Manual Recordings (All Tablo Users with Legacy Devices)
For those without active TV Guide Data Subscriptions, manual recordings are the only recording option available.
Manual recordings with Tablo can be set for a single airing, or on a repeating schedule.
- Go to the Scheduled screen on your Tablo menu.
- Select the plus sign (+) OR ‘+Add New’ button in the top right corner.
- Enter the date/time/channel you want to record.
- When you have finished entering the details of your manual recording, select 'Done' / ‘Continue' / ‘Create'.
- The scheduled recording will then be created and added to the SCHEDULED view. The purple flag indicates that it is a manual recording.
- Once recorded, manual recordings will appear in the RECORDINGS view for playback.
These steps remain the same whether you own a network-connected or TV-connected Tablo, however, the layout may vary slightly. To read more about setting manual recordings for your type of Tablo please follow the links below.
How to create a manual recording for TV-connected Tablos
How to create a manual recording for Network-connected Tablos
Advanced Recording Features (Available only with an active TV Guide Data Service subscription on legacy devices)
Once you’ve set a TV series to record, you can personalize its schedule even more with advanced recording options including:
Keep X Recordings – Keeps only a defined number of episodes to prevent TV series with frequent airings (such as news and talk shows) from piling up on your hard drive. You have to option to keep only the most recent twenty, ten, five, three, or single airings (plus any protected recordings).
Recording Channel Selector – Allows you to record from a preferred channel when the TV series airs on more than one local network.
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 – Allows you to start recording a bit early and/or end it a bit late. You can 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, for example.
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
