I setup my tablo yesterday and it buffers every 1 minute when playing a recording. Here is what I have:
I have a 4 tuner Tablo that is setup wirelessly
The Tablo is in the living room with the Amazon Basics Antenna on top the entertainment center
I have an Aris wireless router from Woway
I am playing from a Roku 3
I have a WD Digital Hard Drive 2TB Basic
I bought the hard drive suggested by Amazon and the Antenna suggested by Amazon. Do I need a faster hard drive or bigger antenna?
Do I need a dual band router instead of the Woway router?
My first guess would be WiFi isn’t sufficient for your setup. What recording quality setting are you using in the Tablo settings menu? If using WiFi, try the 720p Roku setting. If you can test your system with everything connected to wired ethernet and see if that eliminates the buffering, you’ll be able to get a handle on possible causes. https://www.tablotv.com/blog/choosing-right-tablo-recording-quality/
I agree it’s a wireless speed problem. If your wireless router has ethernet ports on it I would plug the Tablo directly into it. That way you can eliminate one wireless path. Also, if your router is not dual band and you can only connect at 2.4 Ghz then your wireless network may be congested (smartphones, tablets Tablo, PC’s, cordless phones, neighbors network, etc…)
The model number is MG5225G. I don’t have an ethernet port in the living room. I will try moving it tonight to the basement to play the previous recording.
If your wireless router is in your basement then that’s part of your problem. Your wireless router should be on the highest floor possible. Wireless signals fall down better than up.
Interesting - your device is a media gateway with a combined router and WiFi functionality. It is supposed to be dual band (so 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands), see the PDF below. Do you have separate SSIDs (aka wireless network names) for the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz band? You could try connecting the Tablo to the 5 GHz band.
Virtually all my Tablo issues went away when I got it off Wi-Fi and connected directly to my router via Ethernet. In order to do that, I had to make one compromise, which was to eliminate an antenna connection to the TV in that room which forces me to watch live TV off the Tablo instead of the antenna. I’m willing to live with that because of the dramatic performance gains.
If you can’t do that, there are Ethernet powerline extenders which extend your router’s Ethernet port by making use of your house power wiring. Simply plug one in at each location, one near your router and one near your Tablo, connect via Ethernet cables and you’re good to go. If you can connect your Roku via Ethernet as well, you’ll have the best possible setup.
I’ve also found that it helps to reboot my Rokus periodically. But Tablo appears to be working solidly, and I haven’t had to reboot in a long, long time. In fact, never since moving it to a direct Ethernet connection. Almost never now do I see any buffering, but I believe it’s my network when it happens and will one day upgrade my router.
Thanks everyone. Switching to 720p Roku/Chromecast worked. If tablo support is listening, as a software developer I would make 720p Roku/Chromecast the default since Roku is the number 1 selling streaming box.
So if I buy the powerline adapters, what resolution will the tablo and Roku support? Let’s say I am playing a recording of the NBC News while on another Roku my kids are watching My Little Pony on Netflix? Will the powerline adapters still support 1080p recordings in this scenario?
Did you even read the Tom’s Hardware link on powerline adapters from my thread? Very helpful, would answer a lot of your questions.
Make sure to get a powerline adapter that is “HomePlug AV2”, not the old “AV”. It will be fast enough to do multiple 1080p streams from your Tablo to router.
Very helpful, would answer a lot of your questions.