Today’s question comes from Tony, who asks, “Can I rewind or fast-forward live TV?”
In short, yes you can.
When you start playing a live show, Tablo keeps it in temporary memory, aka a cache. It holds such as long as you’re viewing the show and an hour after you stop watching it. That means, you can leave it and return soon afterwards, rewind up to where you first started watching it and fast-forward to where the broadcast currently is.
Be cautious, however. If you stop viewing the show and the tuner the show is using is needed for anything else, such as watching a new show or recording something, your cache will empty and you’ll lose it.
This brings to mind another caution you should be aware of. While you can pause a live show, this pause location is held in another cache. Said cache will eventually fill up and your pause place will change. If you pause for too long, you might restart playing your show at a later time than when you left it.
If you’re truly interested in having rewind, pause and fast-forward mastery of a show, we recommend you start recording it. You can then watch your live show from the Library. From here you can time travel through your show to your heart’s content. Also, should you close the viewer, you’ll have no fear of a tuner’s cache dropping it should it need to do something else.
Will this fill up your storage space? Not if you have auto-delete. Unless you set this viewing as protected, you can rest assured your Tablo will clear it out should it need more storage space.
So go forth TV lovers and time travelers, enjoy all the temporal freedoms a DVR like Tablo can give you.
Have a question about watching TV that you’d like answered? Send us a note and you may see your question on the Tablo blog and in an upcoming issue of our newsletter, Stay Tuned!
