At wits end — My Tablo 4th Gen was working perfectly yesterday. Today, when I turned it on, all of my local channels showed a “weak signal” error.
To rule out an antenna issue, I switched my TV input from HDMI (Tablo) to the built-in OTA tuner — all local channels came in strong and clear.
Back on Tablo, I ran a channel scan. My available channels dropped from over 200 to 152 — and none of the local channels are showing up.
I called Tablo support. Josh from India walked me through several troubleshooting steps, but nothing worked. He even suggested I climb onto my two-story roof to re-aim the antenna — despite the fact that I’m clearly receiving OTA channels without issue.
I’ve already tried:
• Power cycling the Tablo
• Rescanning channels (at least ten times)
• Pressing the reset button on the bottom of the unit
Still no luck.
I’m considering a factory reset, but I’m hesitant since I have over 500GB of recorded shows I don’t want to lose.
Any suggestions or insight would be greatly appreciated.
TL;DR:
Tablo 4th Gen suddenly stopped receiving local channels, showing a “weak signal” error. OTA TV works fine on the same antenna. Rescanning reduced channels from 200+ to 152 with no locals. Tried power cycling, reset button, and Tablo support — no fix. Avoiding factory reset to keep 500GB of recordings. Looking for help.
Sorry you’re experiencing this issue. As others have recommended, you shouldn’t do a factory reset because you will lose your recorded data and the logs that Tablo support might use to identify an issue. And, a factory reset usually doesn’t solve the issue.
I found the article below that might be helpful. It sounds like you may want to check your systems reception, antenna, balun, and cabling to be sure nothing has changed. If you can see the antenna on the roof, you might be able to tell whether or not it has rotated enough to cause the poor reception.
Keep in mind that your TV has only 1 tuner while the Tablo has either 2 or 4 tuners and the broadcast signal is split between these tuners. The TV has far lower requirements for the quality of signal needed for good reception.
You can also recheck in the morning after the late-night update has occurred. Maybe it’ll come back on its own. I hope you get a quick resolution on this.
As wysiwyggin said, just because the channels come in directly on your TVs, don’t assume that your antenna is okay. Because it impacted all your broadcast channels at once, I think the problem is there. Because of signal splitting and other some other technical issues, the tuners in the Tablo are less tolerant of poor signal quality than are most TV tuners.
I know we all hate to climb back on the roof, but I would re-check your antenna for aim and obstructions (did a branch on a nearby tree recently shift), and also check all the connectors and wiring down to the Tablo. Something has changed.
Wow. Ya, you’re pretty close to those towers. I’m 16 miles from the Cedar Hill towers and I get strong signals with an old UHF/VHF antenna in my attic. It seems like somethings up. I’ve heard that the closer you are to the towers the more problematic it can be because you might be in a dead spot with the broadcast signal going right over your antenna. It’s good that it’s high up.
Do you have a powered amp somewhere? (which, now that I’m saying that you probably wouldn’t need or have with a roof antenna so close). Very interesting. I agree with @KGBnut that something changed to affect all channels.
Edit: is it possible that the Tablo power supply isn’t putting out enough juice or do you have a powered distribution amp?
I did a scan last night. I’m back to 200+ channels. All local channels (including 11 & 13) came in. 11 is weak and occasionally pixelates but at least it’s there.
@TabloTV@scosio I believe you were part of the attached discussion last December where we discussed pixelation on chan 11. I did a lot of research on this and found that the issue is really caused by TV transmitters on adjacent frequencies. Chans 11 & 21 in Dallas, sister stations, are on adjacent frequencies. Chan 21 interferes with chan 11. Chans 5 and 68 in Dallas are on adjacent freqs. Chan 5 swamps chan 68 most of the time.