Apple TV/Tablo miscellaneous questions

General Discussion
1

I have Tablo on Apple TV and two Fire TV 2’s. Each are hard wired through Ethernet hub to router with recently purchased modem using Comcast 200/10 speeds. Each devise is current with latest OS and Tablo app upgrades.

I’ve had a 4 tuner Tablo for over eight months. During that time I’ve ‘gone’ through 3 antennas, from flat window version to current (3 days) GE indoor/outdoor model (50 mile) inside my apartment due to restrictions.

Its Fall in Boston and some of the leaves have left the trees. I’m about 5-7 miles from the local network antenna ‘farm’ without direct line of site.

With those facts, here’s my question.

Why is Everything so much faster on the Apple TV then the Fire TVs?

On both Fire TV’s it consistently takes 8/10 seconds to locate Tablo, 15/18 seconds to lock selected channel and begin broadcasting and some pixelation during broadcasting.

On Apple TV it takes 5/6 seconds to locate/connect, 8/10 seconds to lock/begin broadcasting and NO pixelation.

Prior to the Apple app release, posters and tech support seemed to say that no amount of firmware upgrades could speed up how fast the Tablo tuners could transcode and deliver product to broadcast devices (Roku, Fire TVs, NVidia Shield). What’s changed now that allows the Apple TV to engage/broadcast with Tablo 33 to 50% faster and show less interference?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

2

Long story short - the Apple TV is a more powerful device.

There are a few factors around how fast things happen on your Tablo:

1 - The baseline Live TV startup. It’s true that there is no way to completely eliminate the 10 or so seconds it takes to begin transcoding a live stream but time can be increased based on the next few factors.

2 - The speed of your home network. Your home network speed is not your ‘external internet speed’ as advertised by your ISP package, but the how fast a chunk of information can go from point A to point B on your network inside your home. This can vary depending on whether you’re on WiFi or Ethernet, the quality of your cabling, your network setup and the quality/age of your router.

3 - The speed and quality of your streaming device. When it comes to devices, you get what you pay for. The better the processing power your device has, the faster things will go. Apple products also seem to be more tolerant of faults in the video stream than other players.

4 - The quality of your OTA signal. As I mentioned in the previous point, some devices are more tolerant of blips in your video stream but if there are a significant amount of signal dropouts, many devices will ask for even MORE segments of video before they begin or resume playback so buffering can be extended.

Hope that helps explain!