For at least a month, I’ve been experiencing a random and frustrating issue when watching OTA recordings on my TCL Google tv. At seemingly random times, the playback will stop, and display the message “a playback error occurred”… Both retry and dismiss buttons do not resolve the issue and the tablo app starts searching for tablo, eventually saying it can’t find one. After about 5 minutes, I can connect to it again. During this time, none of my other devices, phones, or apps can connect to the tablo. Also I’m familiar with an “audio decoding error” for either live or recorded OTA due to signal issues. This is certainly not the same thing since those just mess up the payback and do Not fully crash tablo. I’ve also tried deleting the data, cache, and uninstall / reinstall the app on the TV with no change in behavior.
Also it appears that I’m not the only one because I just found a reddit thread that seems very identical to my issue and I posted the below reply (slightly tweaked for context here) … If I’m allowed, I can share that link?
Same exact problem here on my tcl Google tv. It was rock solid before about a month ago. Recordings that have played flawlessly in the past now randomly throw the “a playback error occurred” error. I have a mix of Roku, android, ios, and am now testing my older apple TV devices and have not seen that error on any of those. The Google tv app was historically the most reliable (and most used) flavor. I have a 3 year old so watching the same Daniel tiger episodes is fairly regular, hence why I know the recordings are OK… Immediately after this happening today (well after about 5 minutes when I could connect back to tablo) I watched the same episode top to bottom on a Roku stick connected to a vizio TV without issue.
I did notice the when this happened the other day, my daughter was watching a recorded Daniel tiger episode on the Goggle TV, and I was watching live news on my iPhone app. When it crashed the Google tv, my live feed stopped and the app complained about not being able to find the tablo.
So something in the Google tv version crashes so hard that it takes out tablo completely for several minutes. Nothing can connect to it.
Here’s a few more details for this crowd…
Tablo 4th Gen 4 tuner
Firmware 2.2.56
TCL Google tv app version 2.0.5
Android model: Smart TV pro
Android os 11.0
1TB USB hard drive connected to Tablo (not using internal built in storage)
Edited to add:
Tablo, Google tv, and apple TV are on a wired network.
Everything else wifi.
Since I have numerous types of devices and apps, I’m happy to assist with further troubleshooting.
