Can you confirm if it is the Fire TV 4K dongle you purchased?
Since the v.18 update my 4-tuner has become very unreliable. My 2-tuner seems much less screwed up. Both were mostly trouble free prior to the firmware update.
Larry
I did get past the live stream problem (at least for now). I saw my drive was about 90% full and I figured maybe this technology isn’t nearly as forgiving with a more full drive as a pc (maybe fragmentation is more of an issue…I don’t know…just guessing). I deleted a lot of stuff to so now it’s about 75% full and I stopped getting the messages it couldn’t stream. I do like the product. I hope to see it get back to normal.
RetiredEnginner.
Maybe the 4 tuner is just more demanding when it comes to drives. I am only guessing but 4 tuners would mean more recording at the same time. Perhaps the 4 tuner is just more demanding on communicating with drives. I don’t know…I just like the product and it’s sure beats paying money to the satellite folks.
I also LIKED the 4-tuner Tablo A LOT until v.18. Now I cannot rely on it to act reliably.
I very much suspect that the extra workload of the 4-tuner unit exacerbates the problems with v.18 firmware. Could be disk I/O, CPU cycles, increased internal EMI, greater heating / thermal issues, or software timing / race issues arising from some or all of the above. A good logic analyzer, competent debugging, and management commitment to properly fix v.18 would be the right approach. Instead, adding more platforms, more new features, and dismissing problems as being user-created will, sadly remain the likely response based on 3+ years of empirical evidence.
If you rollback to v.16 and the problems go away, it’s the new v.18 firmware that’s the problem. Easy to go back and test (you can always upgrade again to v.18):
https://community.tablotv.com/t/tablo-update-2-2-18-problem-recording/14444/19
It certainly makes sense that the four-tuner model is more demanding than the two-tuner one, so maybe these problems aren’t as manifest there. For my part, I’m sticking with the old tried-and-true v.16 with only minimal, occasional problems until v.18, or v.20 some day in the future, gets fixed.
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I reverted to v.16 on my 4-tuner Tablo after yet another Sunday morning with all my 4 Sunday news shows being wrecked by multiple fragments and reboots.
Looking forward to some semblence of stability and far fewer disappointments from fragments, missed recordings, “stuck” icons, etc.
I lost all my recordings, all my Scheduled show programming, and my carefully pruned channel list due to a forced rescan, wasting yet another 3 hours of time. My wife is beyond unhappy with all her recordings disappearing. We never had a single episode of losing all recordings and needing any re-entry of recording schedule in using SageTV as our PVR for over 11 years, so this badly behaved Tablo and associated nonsense is not winning any applause around here, to put it politely.
For the record, I did one and only restart of my Tablo, following EXACTLY the instructions as IMMEDIATELY disconnecting power and IMMEDIATELY releasing the Reset button after solid blue appeared, and did get the v.16 revert as promised. However, losing all my recordings, schedule, and channel list was just one more Tablo “F U”…
Horrible!
One quick thought: If you haven’t otherwise carried out resetting, try to upgrade to v.18 again - there is a small chance that your recordings are still there but in some database form that v.16 cannot read. (Although others have downgraded without this happening, so it sounds grimly like there is something else going on.) At the very worst, I would think you can revert to v.16 again if no shows return and have a better-functioning system.
Although again it sounds like something else/worse may be going on, in which case a full factory reset might not be so awful … but beware: I think that a factory reset will return you to an earlier version than v.16 and your only upgrade option will be to v.18 with v.16 unavailable.
So, so sorry you are encountering this mess. I went through about six months when nothing with my Tablo worked, endless reboots, firmware changes, call and emails with support; it was pretty much (first world) hell, so I know how awful this feels to spend your time on all this with no clear sign when it will be fixed and just work. Hope you get there.
Thanks for your reply.
On the bright side, I no longer have stuck icons, V .16 was a very good release which I now will be able to return to, and I should have a very happy wife now that her shows and our shared shows start appearing reliably again.
Thanks again,
Larry
I am still on V.16, may just stay there for a while . . . I know I am missing out on some features, but, V.16 has been “solid as a rock” for me.
Now that my 4-tuner Tablo is reverted to V.16, each and every recording made diring 4 tuner recordings simultaneously is now, once again, excellent. My Sunday morning talk shows and prime time 4 shows at once look great, with absolutely no fragments, reboots, or problems.
This is OBVIOUSLY a V.18 software issue, not discovered in beta testing, which is glaringly obvious, 100% reproducible, and dismissively / erroneously blamed on weak signal strength (the user is always at fault except theuser86 (;
To make V.18 even more outrageous, here is a scheduling attempt today on my 2-tuner Tablo still runnning V.18, a true POS:
I thought the same thing. Things were running smooth on v.16 but problems started showing up on v.18. I Reverted to v.16 and things were running smooth for awhile but then some of the issues that I had noticed on v.18 started showing On v.16 so I started looking else where. Replaced router & hard drive, then reloaded v. 18. I still think there are some issues that caused the update to V. 18 to hit some weaknesses in my system but I also think the timing of the release, the wettest months of all times here, was also a factor. The weather has settled down and today I reoriented my antenna. Now it is wait and see. I think part of my problem was a poor choice of hard drive & router. Now my weaknesses are my antenna & location. On today’s rescan all channels show in the green but storms are on the way. Still, none of the issues that I have encountered, have caused me to miss any of my shows and the wireless distribution of my recordings and live tv, meets all my needs.
Netgear R6400 router, WD elements Harddrive with external power and I wish I could install a Clearstream antanna at my apartment. Running v.18 for now.
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This is where I’m at. Seems to be multiple variables and hard to isolate because I’ve stayed on .18 and simply upgraded to a better antenna and switched from 10 Mbps to 8 Mbps and the two, isolated problems I was encountering went away. Period. I’ve been through similar weather as I had during those two problems and with those 2 changes I’ve had zero problems since. Given Tablo has said they made no firmware changes regarding tuner sensitivity, etc in my case my conclusion was .18 was coincidental for my problems.
I have an older 42 inch Shape TV, so I am running at 720 5 mbps. I am limited by no line of sight and 40 miles to the antennas. Issues do not happen often but some issues seem to happen more frequently on v.18 than v.16. Still v.18 is worth the change.
I don’t think there have been any changes made to the tuner code. What I am observing is the inability of the four tuner unit to handle four simultaneous recordings properly. There are no artifacts of low signal strength whatsoever such as macro blocking, mosaicing, or sound loss. To the contrary, all four channels have good, solid, reception but then suddenly, simultaneously drop their recordings and the Tablo reboots. This interruption happens roughly every 12 minutes over the course of the recordinsg, chopping one hour episodes into approximately five segments of 12 minutes apiece. This problem happens consistently with simultaneous four channel recording on the four tuner Tablo. It does not show up when fewer channels are recorded nor does it show up on the two tuner unit. It happens every single time on 4 tuner recordings with 18 but never happens with 16. Replacing a router, antenna, etc. has nothing to do with this problem. No doubt there are true situations where weak signal strength can cause recording problems, and these may be exacerbated by the V18 software. Weak signal strength should never cause a reboot, and should be handled gracefully by a properly designed firmware. Software crashes and reboots arise from very poor software coding and design and are further exacerbated by poor software testing and quality control.
Odd that I don’t see your problem on my 4 tuner Tablo. There are some quirks that I’ve learned to live with, but it has been mostly reliable for me. Oh, I’m running the latest version of firmware as well.
When I did see this problem, where Tablo would reboot during recording, it was due to either a weak or missing signal, or touching the bottom front edge of the Tablo after walking across a carpet in my dry household, resulting i an ESD hit. I solved the former with a better antenna, and the latter by putting the Tablo out of sight and not touching it.
Can you record 4 shows simultaneously without rebooting? Can you watch one of them live as the 4 recordings are being made?
That may be the critical piece. I know I’ve provided some feedback about NOT encountering most of the issues you are are encountering on .18 on my 4 tuner but I need to check my scheduled recordings.
I know I regularly have 3 shows recording simultaneously but may actually not have a scenario where it’s 4 simultaneous. Maybe it’s a “load” scenario? I know in the few issues I DID encounter it actually WAS a low/signal situation that caused the initial reboot which then cascaded into issues with other shows simply because the reboot affected all tuners of course.
3 at a time is never a problem. 4 at a time, which I routinely record both on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, is always a problem, but only on v18, never on V16.
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Yes, just did.
Tablo Quad
Firmware v2.2.18
Recording Quality: HD 1080 - 10 Mbps
4 simultaneous recordings from 9:00AM - 10:00AM.
2 - 1080i channels
1 - 720p channel
1 - 480i channel
Will do that later this afternoon, and report back.