Better Handling of Loss of Signal

Feature Requests
1

I know this has already been reported about a year ago (here), but I’d like to enter it as a feature request to get some visibility. I would like to request some improved handling of instances where the signal is lost, such as when it hits the digital cliff for a second or two. If it could be handled gracefully, it could prevent corrupt recordings of things like 3 hour sporting events.

To explain why it’s useful, there’s a station in my area that is nice and clear nearly all the time, but it’s just far enough away where the signal can drop for a second or two. Because of this, I can’t really get any long recordings, such as 2 hours, to ever succeed, like a sporting event or a long episode. The signal usually drops once within that time frame, which corrupts the recording after that point. If it’s a live event, I have to delete the recording in process in order to actually view it live again because the corruption won’t let me skip to the live segment. If you ever need some diagnostic data, I can usually reproduce this every day by trying a 2 hour recording.

So, in summary, I wish recordings wouldn’t get corrupted if the signal drops for a second or two. I’d rather have a few seconds of blackness instead. :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

Great idea and request.

But maybe we can help you improve your signal so this happens less frequently.

  1. What is the OTA antenna you’re using? Is it amplified?
  2. How long is the cable run from the antenna to the Tablo? Is it split any times before the Tablo?
  3. What kind of coaxial cable is used? RG59 or RG6?

It is possible dropping a distribution amplifier just before the Tablo might help as the Tablo does split the signal 4 ways to supply the multiple tuners.

1 Like
3

Thanks for offering to help. I hope my request is still decent enough to consider because I’m not sure signal will ever be 100% perfect because of my location, but here are the answers to your questions:

  1. I have an Antennas Direct ClearStream 4. It’s not amplified at the moment.
  2. I would say it runs approximately 100-150 ft. It’s not split. The shortest I could probably get it would be about 20 ft., but then I run into the limitations of my home network.
  3. RG6

If I have a 2-tuner Tablo, does that mean it only splits it 2 ways instead of 4? Either way, do you have any recommendations for amplifiers? If that would help it happen less frequently, I would be willing to give it a try because I think the setup I have is pretty close to ideal for my house. It’s been going great for a few months for almost every channel, but this one has been bugging me recently.

4

For an antenna that is not amplified and that long of a cable run, then get a pre-amplifier and install it directly at the antenna. Within a few feet of the antenna.

Many users here have found this very helpful in boosting the signal quality, Winegard LNA-200

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5

I second the request for better handling of brief signal drops. This sometimes happens even with very good strong stations because of various environmental factors. I don’t really care that I miss two seconds of a show but those two lost seconds often corrupt the recording making it impossible to go past the bad section even if the signal was good for the whole rest of the show after. Note that I have got around this by using the Tablo Exporter created by Jestep. After running the video through that it reencodes it and removes all the corrupted parts. But then you can’t run it though the Tablo app unfortunately

1 Like
6

Thanks to both of you for your help! I’ll try the pre-amplifier and hopefully that will help.

MarcCharette, I have tried using the Tablo Exporter the past couple of days, but it hasn’t worked. It seems to fail at about the point of corruption. I’ll give it a few more tries unless you have any suggestions on what might make it work.

7

@thearchitect2 it usually stops for a while but keeps going eventually when it hits corruption for me. I’ve seen it stop for 20 minutes but then I come back later and its done. So if you haven’t tried just leaving it run for a while then give that a shot

8

Hey folks - This problem originates with poor signals so our first recommendation is always to improve your antenna or at least improve the positioning.

That being said, we have asked our chip provider if there’s a way that we can work with them to improve the error handling during video processing.

2 Likes
9

Thanks for your hard work! I hope the chip provider can provide some good news. I will certainly make an attempt to improve my signal as well, but thank you for considering my request.

10

No problem.

We’re always hard at work trying to make Tablo more awesome. Some things require more effort than others though :slight_smile:

11

I would appreciate this. I’ve noticed some recordings have extreme ‘tearing’ effects, and often causes weird artifacts like speeding up and looping, and eventually ends with a corrupted video that cannot be watched. Watching the signal on the TV with the antenna bypassing the Tablo altogether gets through minor video hiccups and resumes playback without such issues.

1 Like