This is a legacy Tablo article. To see the 4th Generation Tablo version of it, go here.
Tuners decode the signal coming in from your over-the-air TV antenna and split it either two ways for dual-tuner Tablo DVRs or four ways for quad-tuner Tablo DVRs.
A tuner is required for:
- Watching a live TV program.
- Recording a program.
- Watching a live or recorded program away from home using Tablo Connect (unless your remote streaming quality is set to 'full').
- Generating Fast-Forward Previews which are a prerequisite for Automatic Commercial Skip processing.
So the more tuners your Tablo DVR has, the more concurrent live TV streams or recordings it can support.
Watching a completed recording does not require a tuner.