Channel Scan results: Engine vs Tablo 2/4 question

if i had a ladder tall enough i just might!

hopefully at least putting the sealing pads on the inside help with any leaking/water damage

one last thing on this, thank you for the advice on the distribution amp vs the traditional splitter! i replaced my splitter with the amp and now all my main channels are getting 30 - 30.5 for SNR!

Oh man, you can get it to 31 and hit Nirvana! Just a half more db. Then youā€™d get 100%. You canā€™t be happy with 99.9% :smile:

Youā€™re getting the most accurate results using the Hauppauge meter - something most users here have been asking Tablo to implement for measurementā€¦

so close! the odd thing is even w/ those numbers i still get the pixelation issue on Engine only (not on OG 2). Originally the support response was that its probably from signal issues but not sure how to interpret it now if iā€™m getting this strong of a signal

Iā€™m curious if i was to get a 2nd hauppage usb tuner and have that plugged into my ubuntu server box if thereā€™s any way to monitor the signal from that (so i can check on to reference the current signal strength if i see any hiccups on the tablo side). so far only way i could find is if i used the stndard gui linux (ubuntu)

For my Raspberry Pi, I used Libreelec (Linux type JeOS) with TVheadend which does give me signal strength measurement comparable to Hauppauge. However I donā€™t know of any Linux based signal meters apart from this. HDHomerun tuners come with signal measuring apps that give you as much info as Hauppauge. HDHomerun may be better for the Ubuntu server especially with Plex.

A strong signal can still be disrupted and pixelation occur. A friend lives close to the airport and is in the flight path. He gets 90% signal strength from his location but will get interference from flights.

The fact that two tuners can behave differently given the same signal is not strange. Different designers and manufacturers of these chips have implemented different strategies onboard to fight multipath phenomena (cross interference on the same frequency). One may be more successful than another on this issue. The tuner chips are different on the Tablo 2 and the Engine.

Are both Tablo DVRs in the same room or in different locations? Wondering if there could be another source of interference close to the Engine lower from the antenna such as LTE signals from closeby cell phone towers? I bought an LTE filter from CM to combat this. There are several threads at this forum regarding LTE interference and filtering.

I might add that other devices near the antenna or DVR can impact reception and cause pixelation. When my wife turns on the blender in the kitchen to bake something, the blender machine emits some frequencies that cause pixelation on screen.

well so far its happened at 2 different houses and the only thing around the tuner is the Shield (w/ usb hard drive ), TV, soundbar and Harmony Hub (same equip at both houses). Itā€™d be pretty difficult to test w/out any of those devices given their role. I had the same setup w/ my OG 2 and didnā€™t have it occur at all but i know they are different tuners. When this occurs i get the pixelation and the occasional audio/video skip even (also never saw on my OG2 (or old TiVo that we had previously) so not sure what to make of it

How persistent is the pixelation on the Engine? Daily, weeklyā€¦?

Does it occur across many channels or just specific ones? VHF or UHF?

all of our main channels that we watch are UHF and its a daily occurrence. Iā€™d have to pay a little closer attention to if its channel specific but we usually watch shows previously recorded across the major networks (abc, nbc, cbs, fox) and from what iā€™ve seen iā€™m pretty sure its a pretty regular thing (i know that because my wife is getting pretty annoyed by it haha)

If the Hauppauge USB tuner was moved temporarily to the Ubuntu machine as a test, wonder if it would occur there as well? Then we could narrow it down to the USB tuner or not.

Iā€™d be annoyed by it too since we save a lot of recorded shows to our library for the future. Pixelation drives me nuts when I see it on a show in our permanent media library.

I actually did have that setup on my Ubuntu / plex box and did not see it happen there. Granted it was minimal testing since Plex Live TV was pretty glitchy when i was testing but it seemed fine

yup same hereā€¦iā€™d even be slightly ok w/ the pixelation if the picture/audio wouldnt skip with it

That would narrow it down to the Engine (Shield) rather than the Hauppauge tuner itself. Something concerning the Shield?

thats what i thought. I have plans to add a 2nd of these tuners to add to my Plex server in the next month and figured iā€™d do a little more testing then (record same show in both places and test)

I would Google ā€œNvidia Shield + tv usb tuner + problemā€ - it may not be a Tablo software problem but an Nvidia one (at the driver level)ā€¦ So many layers to this thing! Like with the Roku and Tablo.

are you finding something in the nvidia forums about noise w/ tuners on that platform? most i found so far was the big discussions about why the hauppage tuner doesnā€™t work w/ Live Channels

Saw this at a Shield forum:

ā€œAntenna connected to the TV tuner and everything works great. Connected the WinTV-dualHD to my PC and that also worked great with no drop outs in signal. Try to watch live TV on PLEX and I continually receive weak signal message.ā€

Another user wrote,

ā€œSo it appears that I may have isolated my issue to using a USB flash drive as internal storage. As soon as I migrated data back to the internal storage on the Shield and ejected the usb drive, live TV in PLEX works great on all channels.ā€

What storage do you use on the Shield for recording and buffering? I had a similar problem using flash drives.

How does the Hauppauge USB tuner work on the PC?

interesting! so that user must be using the Shield built in PMS server. I actually was getting the weak signal issue on Engine during my setup testing but i THINK it was due to using a thin coax cable from the wall to the tuner. since switching to a thicker RG6 cable its been fine (other than the pixelation of course). I guess best we can do is wait for Shield to release an update at some point

What storage do you use on the Shield for recording and buffering? I had a similar problem using flash drives on Raspberry PI and replaced it with a standard drive. The flash drive doesnā€™t have enough buffering to keep up with the continuous data stream sent to it. Found the same problem on my Homewrx DVR.