Can you tell I have a buffering problem? I have a Tablo Quad, with an ASUS mesh network, a router that supports Wi-Fi 6, and a HUGE antenna that’s hard wired into the Tablo, along with one of the 3 router nodes. My house is 1800 sq. ft. and each node supports up to 2000 sq. ft. My Tablo, node that’s hard wired and HUGE antenna are located in the attached garage. On the inside wall is another node, the main router and the inside the wall node are about 20 feet from my Roku Ultra. The Tablo has a 2 TB western digital SSD attached to it. Tablo support said unplug the SSD. I did, buffering stayed. Tablo support said how far away is main router, I said 20 feet, they said should be OK. Tablo support said, it doesn’t work well with Mesh networks. I told Tablo support, if your product doesn’t work well with Mesh networks, you’ll be out of business in two years as that’s the way the world is going. My connection says “excellent” on the Roku, yet buffering is driving me nuts. Any ideas?
PROBLEM SOLVED - Thank you everyone for your contributions. The buffering problem has been resolved. I certainly appreciate all the time you took to reply and was especially impressed with Brittnay from Tablo Support. The resolution was offered by Scott Mccay, in his comment about QOS. I changed the QOS for “Media Streaming” on the main router to be top priority. Problem solved! Thanks everyone!
Yep! Moving to use Tablo this year has exposed many issue with my internal network, which has led to dramatic improvements in overall network health and performance. I highly recommend the learnings posted above, especially around isolating your network for testing purposes, which can usually cost only a couple extra long Ethernet/coaxial cables.
should and does is different a router can get to much traffic and streaming suffer the most when a bottleneck occurs i ran into same prob what i was able to do was enable something called QOS in my router quality of service it lets you set priority to your devices also if you live somewhere where there are other people with wifi there can occur traffic on the channel your on try different channels preferably a higher on you can get a scanner app a look where there is the most used channel.
I say “should” because that’s what the spec says. In the process of implementing QOS, I checked and have 12. I moved media streaming to #1 and will check tonight. Thanks everyone for your contributions.
Too also give you an idea of how the wireless splashes in your home… download Acrylic Wireless Analyzer on your laptop. Then talk around and see what the signal levels are. -73 is the start of low signal. Anything above -73 is bad. You want your signal to be in the -50 to -60 range,that is perfect signal.
Be careful on the QOS part… since this is a client to client transfer, your router may QOS the WAN (internet) Port and not the internal network. This may help with FAST channels.
I have Tablo on the ethernet backbone in my home and then three Roku Ultras at the three main TVs I use for viewing. The Roku’s are also ethernet connected to my LAN switch (1GB 16 port switch).
I have zero buffering issues.
You could also try ethernet backhaul on your “nodes”. I am not a big believer in self organizing networks that use wireless bandwidth for the back haul of the nodes. That is best done hard wired such that wireless is just for the client side.
As a general rule I try to hardwire everything I can in my home and reserve for WiFi nomadic devices and those just too difficult to hardwire. But that is just how I do it.
I am also a huge fan of hardwiring everything possible, but I recognize this is not practical for many users. I’m no network expert, but I’ve run in to so many issues trying to get wifi to be reliable for this application (Tablo) that I gravitate heavily toward ethernet in my installation, as well as the many installations I’ve helped others with.
On the topic of the “puck” type wifi setups…
Again I’m no expert, but a local fiber internet company came through our neighborhood recently and did a total fiber infrastructure install. They signed up a large percentage of homeowners to their “blazing fast” fiber internet. They installed “puck” type wifi systems as their standard package. Performance was so bad they came through over the next several months to collect all the “pucks” and switched everyone to an “all-in-one” hardware piece that provided the fiber modem, router, and wifi. That setup took care of the majority of complaints.
Can you define “buffering”?
Do you mean, when you select a recording, or channel to watch, it takes a while before it starts playing video content? Or do you mean inside the navigation menus of the app, as in, when you select “Live”, you get the spinning wheel for 60-90+ seconds before the channel guide info comes up?
Just curious, because I’ve been experiencing the latter lately, but not the former.
Either can be buffering. My buffering is primarily in the middle of an OTA program, the screen goes black and the spinning circle takes over for anywhere between 30 seconds to 3 minutes.
That spinning circle might be due to a weak RF signal and nothing to do with WiFi or ethernet connection. When I unplug the antenna coax to Tablo, after the buffer runs out, I get a black screen and a spinning white circle.
To check signal strength on your Tablo, navigate to Settings > Guide/Channel lineup/Your Channels and look for the four dots at the right side of each channel listing, which indicate signal strength.
Respectfully, this has not been what I have found. The spinning circle is the streaming app buffering to get enough data to display the program smoothly. When I have poor RF I tend to get pixelation, audio, sync, and other program quality issues. I have had piss-poor signal with no buffering.
Also, those colored dots in the channel selection really only give a very rough estimate of the signal strength. And, don’t think they are dynamic, but rather show you what signal strength was at the time of the last channel scan.
Agreed. Tablo signal diagnostic are very poor. Its a shame as that would be pretty easy to handle in software as the RSSI comes from the rf front end as do S/N and other digital indicators of channel quality. Just display them somewhere.
My comments were more for the OP where it seemed to be presumed the problem was on the network side and not the RF. I was just commenting that a non existent or very low RF signal will give you the spinning circles on a black screen. Again Tablo could be more helpful sending out an indicator message, buffer depleted check network connection, signal loss of lock check rf connection, …