Gadgetory

one of the best way for court cutters to keep up with sports and award shows is using free over-the-air TV but the options for recording that content have always been limited especially if you don't want the hassle of building a media center PC hey I'm Matthew moscovia from C net and the new vo tableau is one of the most exciting over-the-air recording solutions to come out in years it uses the same concept that simple TV debuted at CES 2012 streaming live and recorded over-the-air TV to devices you already have like iOS and Android devices Roku boxes the Apple TV and chromecast there's not much to the hardware it's a simple black box and on the back there are a few ports including Ethernet 2 USB ports and an antenna input there's also built in Wi-Fi and tableau has dual tuner capability so you can record two programs at once also note that there's no HDMI output and that's because tableau doesn't output any video itself it only streams live and recorded content to other devices on your home network one of the nice advantages of that is that you can put tableau anywhere that's convenient it doesn't have to be right next to your TV in addition to the tableau box you also need a USB hard drive and an antenna for tableau to work and neither of those are included the tableau itself costs two hundred and twenty dollars plus there's a five dollar monthly fee but make sure you add in the cost of the accessories to get the true total price on the unit now the user interface for tableau depends on what device you're using but they all have similar categories like live TV prime time TV shows movies sports and recordings the iPad app is the best experience overall with plenty of screen real estate to navigate listings programs load very quickly even over Wi-Fi and skipping through commercials feels almost instant in the living room the Roku is the best option since you get a true on screen display but the overall experience still needs some work there's only a super basic channel guide and there's no easy way to skip through commercials there's a 10-second skip which means you have to press forward too many times or you can try and fast forward but since only the progress bar moves forward not the screen on the background you kind of just have to guess when the commercials end if you do most of your TV watching in the living room rather than on a tablet the short companies do get tired well they found tableau to be remarkably reliable in recording my favorite shows it wasn't quite up to the task with sports where tableau only records the allotted time for games now since most games tend to run a little long that meant tableau recordings were cut out before the end of the game new vo says it's working on a fix but until then you're not going to want to count on tableau to record sporting events the most impressive aspect of tableau is its image quality especially if you choose the highest recording quality option usually streaming solutions like this really struggle with sports but tableau actually looks pretty good and on non sports content it can be hard to tell you're not watching regular TV in the first place so altogether there's a lot about tableau that really impressed me from its overall reliability to the image quality and the excellent experience on the iPad what the issues were recording sports and the clunky Roku app puts a blow squarely in the early adopter territory for now even though the technology looks quite promising if you're willing to live with some growing pains tableau is well worth of two hundred and twenty dollars but mainstream buyers are currently better off with more traditional products like the channel master DVR plus and the TiVo Romeo