I stream my Tablo to Roku. It will buffering roughly once every 20-30 minutes. I checked wifi signal level is good. They are on 5G wifi and 80Mhz width. Is there any other troubleshooting I could do to figure out why it buffers once every 20-30 minutes?
My Live TV quality is set at the recommended 720p 3Mbps
You could try changing the wifi channel in the router, or better yet install a wifi analyzer program on your phone to verify you’re on the best channel.
Yep - switching to the 5 GHz could help:
https://www.tablotv.com/blog/tablo-faqs-what-wifi-frequency-should-i-use/
The support team is also capable of helping with network analysis: www.tablotv.com/ask-tablo
It’s already on 5G channel
Yes. I already checked out wifi channel
Oops - sorry! Needed more coffee 
What version of Roku do you have? And how far away is the Roku from your router?
5Ghz can reduce interference, but it’s not great over long distances. And not all Rokus are created equal. Some of them have older, slower N type WiFi vs. AC.
We do have some tips here as well:
Yes. I have checked it is AC Wifi and signal quality is good from the reporting of my router. My question is when buffering, it will just forward 10-20 seconds of programming (there is a gap between the start of buffering and end of buffering). Is it an indication that buffering is caused by bad TV signal?
Not necessarily although that is kind of odd.
Is this only on live TV, or is it on recordings as well? What’s your recording quality set at?
What type of storage are you using with your Tablo?
I have only watched Live TV so far. I am going to test recording tonight. Live TV is set to 3Mbps and Recording is set to 5Mbps. I have a SSD (with USB to SATA adapter) attached to Tablo.
I am also going to test turning of “Live TV fast start” tonight as suggest in the blog post.
It is weird that it will jump 10-20 seconds forward when it came out of buffering instead of continue. It seems like they restarted the transcoding instead of a true buffering.
Wondering if this is the culprit then.
When you get home try disconnecting that drive and streaming a single live TV channel. If you don’t see any buffering, then I’d try a new drive.
I’ll give it a try. Will a good SD card in a USB card reader works?
Sorry. Flash just isn’t fast or stable enough long term for recording live TV.
Check out the link above for required specs and recommendations.
Ok. I am reading all the https://community.tablotv.com/t/tested-hard-drives/ Will pick one from tested brand.
It looks like USB drive is the culprit. I plugged in a new Seagate one and it works fine. No buffering problems. It buffered once and it looks like a regular network related as it lasts only 2 seconds and there is no gap coming out of buffering.
2 Likes