4 tuner Tablo is not recording at min of 30 frames per sec. Noticeable vs FIOS DVR

General Discussion
21

Hi all,


Sorry for the wait. Here are some details on frame rates:

The Tablo transcodes all HD video at 30 frames per second, for both 720p and 1080p.

If you see any motion blur, it will usually come up in a couple of circumstances:

-Watching video with lots of panning and fast motion (sports)
-Sending the stream to a large HD TV where the pixels are more visible, i.e motion blur will also be more visible.

I hope this helps - let me know if want a little more detail on this.
22

Should I expect a worse experience using a Roku3 on my new LG 55" screen vs the FIOS DVR that is connected to it?

And it is not just my Roku + TV that I notice it.  I notice on my iPad as well.

It seems that the Tablo is not able to stream at 30 frames per second?  Without seeing the raw saved video file I would assume that the tuner HW is saving the file at a true 30 frames per second without issue.

-MM13

23

@MattMan13


All of the video the Tablo sends is 30 FPS - it won’t degrade the FPS rate at all. The Tablo will transcode any and all incoming video in order to send it across your network. During this process, everything is converted to 30 FPS - no exceptions. Even if there are device and/or network constraints - The Tablo will stutter/buffer the video as opposed to lowering the FPS or the overall quality. 30 frames is a concrete number for any video coming through.

According to Roku’s documentation, and a chat I’ve had with our developer(s), the Roku can’t actually output 60FPS, and caps at 30. You can send it a 60FPS video, but it will downscale to either 24 or 30 FPS depending on the stream. In this case, with the Tablo, it will always go to 30. 
24

If I have everything hard wired with CAT-5 there shouldn’t be stutter, correct?

I am just trying to understand what needs to be done to get the video that is being recorded at 30FPS to display at 30 Fps?

I will connect my laptops to both end of the Cat-5 cable between my Tablo and Roku to ensure that there are cabling issues causing delays.

-Matt

25

@MattMan13 


The video is being sent from the Tablo is always 30 FPS. The time it takes to deliver that content to your devices is the part that’s dependent on the network.

So, if you’re seeing stuttering or buffering of the video, that’s a result of the a bottleneck on the network - not of the Tablo’s failure to properly transcode the video to 30 FPS - the frames per second never vary at all.

That being said - adding Ethernet to the equation will always give you better results in terms of performance, so if the original problem here is that you’re seeing stutters - then yes, this will certainly help.
26
Should I expect a worse experience using a Roku3 on my new LG 55" screen vs the FIOS DVR that is connected to it?

And it is not just my Roku + TV that I notice it. I notice on my iPad as well.

@MattMan13 take a step back and consider the post-processing happening on your displays.

I had a critical issue with my TV and Tablo months ago, which involved the factory default TV settings, which enable 60fps “smoothing?”. The feature was just stupid because everything OTA looked weird at 60fps and when I tried to play Tablo via Chromecast with this feature enabled, it was unwatchable due to weird stuttering… Something was clearly non-standard about the Tablo stream… But I didn’t like the 60fps feature, so I just turned it off. This could be your issue, too.

Choosing not to use an iPad, iCan’t explain that issue fully… except to point out that the recent Tablo updates have broken tablet play back on my android nexus 10 (ridiculous!) and win 8 atom processor tablets due to the switch to software decoding and the lag/jitter/out-of-synch issues this has brought up on this hardware. Maybe it’s happening to older iPads too?

27

@Thumbs you bring up a good point.  The crap that gets enabled on new TVs is awful.   However,  I had already disabled this stuff and copied it to all inputs.   I also have switched the HDMI for my FIOS DVR to HDMI 2 and the Tablo to HDMI 1.  Same exact behavior.

I just hard powered off the Tablo and still seeing the same thing.  I am going to login to the FIOS router to see if there are any network port issues.

-MM13

28

Last few tricks up my sleeve are… Good luck.

Possible QoS settings within your router.
If enabled, without the Tablo in mind… That may be a cause.

If your unsure of the integrity of the network wire… Drop the network port to 10mbs speed, as that uses half the twisted pair wires and might just get you around a defective cable.

This just highlights how crazy it is this device doesn’t have an HDMI port built in.

Can’t wait to hear what the root cause ends up to be.

29

BTW, I just decided 720p for football games wasn’t good enough on the big screen… Because the tiny little legs are constantly in blur when the whole field is shown and the play is in motion.

So I’ve switched to 1080 and will be switching the Roku to 1080 as well. I am waiting for some more games to record to decide if this improves the football experience.

30

(I remember when big screen was 480i on a 50" 4:3 aspect TV… are we spoiled or what?)

31

Wow, a PPI of 16!

At 1080, I’ll be lucky to get 11 PPI.

Now, if OTA broadcast at 2k resolutions… That would spoil us!

32

… or it will kill us all :-)  Frankly I’m surprised the powers that be have allowed us any access to HD sports that wasn’t tied to an expensive subscription.  And if  you’ve every trialed things like the NFL Network, you know they simply cannot handle the load (and the feeds look like garbage).

33

These new 4k televisions may look nice when you stand 3 feet away from them in a store, but you’ll never see the difference at a normal viewing distance for a 55" TV.  It’s hard enough to see the difference between 720 and 1080 at normal viewing distances.  IMHO, it’s another gimmick for television companies to make money.

34

With a bunch of broadcast TV NFL preseason games coming up,  can others DVR a game on your cable DVR and Tablo at the same time and compare the frame rate?

You should be able to detect the limitied frame rate on the Tablo (if you have the same issue).   It is not blatantly obvious,  but switching between the recordings you’ll notice that the Tablo does not seem real-time or smooth vs the cable DVR.

Let me know.

-MM13

35

I was just looking at the specs on the Amazon Fire TV and noticed it says that it is capable of up to 60 fps. Is there any content available that would play at 60 fps? And, is the Tablo capable of sending video at 60 fps if there were an app for the Fire TV? That would get me to switch from Roku in a snap. 

36

@Markhag All video that comes out of the Tablo is currently set to 30 FPS. We’re constantly looking to improve the Tablo, so who knows what the future holds. We don’t have any current plans to switch to 60 at the moment.

37

@TabloSupport it would only be supported on newer devices anyway and some of us have old devices :stuck_out_tongue:

38

60 FPS is not a big deal.  We have been watching 30 FPS forever.  That is what our eyes see as normal.  For some of us (maybe only me?)   when watching TV that is not displaying at 30 FPS it is noticeable.

-MM13

39
@MattMan13 I think you're confusing the FPS rate with buffering. The two aren't mutually exclusive. If you have a network issue, an HD issue, or something that causes the Tablo to visibly stall the video, we call this 'buffering' or 'video stutters'.

The video will stutter, pause and visibly have to 'load' the segments to keep playing video. However, the video that does come out, is always coming out at 30 FPS. It sounds like the issue you're having is with the video actually loading - not the frame rate at which it's playing.
40

I finally tested the Tablo connected to the Fios router via ethernet with a 2 foot (known good cable).  My previous cable I created using my Cat-5 tools.

As @TabloSupport is alluding to even though I was connected via Ethernet I wanted to double check with a know good cable to eliminate networking as an issue.

The results of the test are exactly the same,  the Tablo is not buffering it just appears that it is not transmitting 30FPS to my Roku 3.

I am concerned that the 4-tuner Tablo can not output 30FPS to the destination devices.  I am acutally fine if it is a little worse over WiFi,  because I can use ethernet for the most important viewing device,  my TV.  But as of this point I am not convinced that it can?

The FPS issue is not an obvious issue.  If you are not as particular as I,  you may never notice it.  I just expect the experience to be relative to my cable DVRs where 30FPS means 30FPS.  

Any at Tablo testing to see if they can recreate this?

-MM13