I have a 4th gen 4 tuner Tablo. The tablo displays all 480i broadcasts, regardless of channel, full height but squeezed horizontally. This happens whether the original material is 4:3, 16:9, or something else. All TVs show those same 480i stations properly when connected directly to an antenna feed. Some of my TVs have aspect adjustments but some do not, making many stations unviewable (or at least painful) on those TVs. All the streaming devices and 1 TV are Roku. Does this happen only with Roku or is this strictly a Tablo problem. Is there a fix for this. If not, and if I had known about this before hand, I would never have purchased this device, and without a fix I won’t recommend it to anyone else either, unless they don’t care about the sub-channels.
I can’t address your 4:3/16:9 issue but I want to suggest you not give up on Tablo so quickly. There are many on here who are more familiar with the technical aspects and they’ll happily help you. It’s likely a setting on your TV, Roku or Tablo, but rest assured there’s a solution.
Tablo TV indicates it’s a Roku bug but I experience the same aspect ratio “bug” on Android mobile, Fire Stick 4k G2 and LGTV apps.
In other threads and sites I’ve read that it depends upon what ratio the originators send the program to the broadcasters.
I have an issue with OTA 480i programming through the Tablo app not being displayed properly on some (most) of my Roku devices. The problem is that any 480i programming is squished horizontally. I have the following devices experiencing this problem:
__Roku TV — 40R3BX KJ04X - a little over a year old
__Roku Streaming Stick Plus (2 of these) — 3830R - 8 months old
Everything displays properly on my oldest device - about 2+ years old:
__Roku Express 4K+ — 3941RW2
Is this fixable via firmware updates from Roku or Tablo, or thru a cooperative effort between the two? Or is this specifically a hardware problem, meaning I need to replace the sticks (ridiculous - less than a year old) and a year old TV (even more ridiculous)?
If firmware is the answer, how long do I have to put up with this problem? Changing settings on the TVs isn’t a solution. They don’t do enough or they do too much - on the TVs that have such settings - and then stuff that normally displays properly gets screwed up. Not an adequate work-around at all.
Not just a Tablo or Roku problem. Same problem on TiVo OTA. Seems to be the broadcasters problem.
Looks like SD programming is being forced to view as “letterbox”
Been that way for a little while and have been fighting with Great tV to correct it.
Used to be able to use the TV settings to change aspect ration from panel to full to zoom but now I can’t.
Guess the people at these networks don’t watch their own programming.
The 3830R is marked as incompatible and probably won’t or can’t be fixed due to its Roku specs. Maybe Roku updated it to work, but I don’t know for sure. You may need to check with Tablo as to whether or not the 40R3BX KJ04X TV is compatible.
UPDATE: just found this in another thread…it appears Roku fixed the issue and you need to enable Audio Compatibility Mode… Roku 3830 incompatibility - #16 by TabloTV
I thought letter boxing was added to the actual video by the broadcaster to preserve the desired aspect ratio. If so full,zoom, etc probably will do nothing to remove the letterbox.
Side pillar black bars. Blue on the Gen4 sometimes - Fire Stick 4k G2. Squished vertical video. Stretching. I can’t watch it. Android mobile app.
I read something somewhere that it relates to 480i being transmitted 480p by the originators feed. Who knows? These are all 480i from the station.
Native LGTV is full screen with no distorted video.
I did change the TV settings from 16:9 to ‘Scan’ to see no difference using the Gen4.
Changing to ‘Original, 4:3, Vertical Zoom or 4-Way Zoom’ made it worse.
I suspect that some of the issues are related to the recent 2.1 app update which Tablo is working to correct.
Each of the diginets is different. H&I is ok… Kinda letterbox.
These two are ACE and Rewind.
