When I took Dish’s offer to drop satellite-delivered locals, I thought my Dish Hopper DVR could handle recording them over-the-air. I was wrong. Maybe it’s a quirk in my particular receiver or maybe it’s systemic, but most HD OTA recordings would play back with a hiccupped soundtrack. Unwatchable.

I would have called Dish tech support by now except that I quickly switched to my old Tablo, which worked so well that I didn’t bother with my Hopper. I play my Tablo’s OTA recordings back through the Roku via my home network.

Today I noticed that Amazon has the latest model of the dual-tuner Tablo available for a lower price than I paid for my older version. It comes with better wifi support than mine (which isn’t a problem because I’ve got mine connected via Ethernet), and unlike mine it comes with 64 GB of memory built-in (but I’d recommend an inexpensive external hard drive anyway). Unlike most DVRs, it can also stream outside the home so you can watch your recordings or live TV from anywhere with an internet connection.

If you order one for yourself or as a present for a cord-cutting friend while using this link, Amazon will eventually reward me with enough hard cash to pay my hosting bill for several days – maybe a week. That would be a win for everybody.