Chromecast experiences? Help gather info

Welcome back! :-0

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Thanks :slight_smile:

True, except for one case.
The Tablo will playback a previously recording without re-transcoding it, if the remote streaming quality for the playing device matches the max recording quality of the Tablo.

Have you tried that tho? I Couldnā€™t even get 1Mbps to work with out buffering. I regularly do plex at 4 or 8 outside my house all the time too.

The difference between what Tablo does for remote viewing transcoding and what others do is that the remote viewing is converted to a single rate, regardless of connection.

Again, you choose the quality in settings, you have a choice on live /local viewing / recording quality and a second choice on the remote re-transcoded output quality. The other apps most want to compare Tablo to can change that bitrate on the fly as needed.

I would think it would take much faster hardware to continually monitor throughput / SNR / etc and change the bitrate than to just transcode to a single setting.

Not saying they still couldnā€™t do better and your info about 8Mb working until bad segments does put me on your way of thinking that this might not be bitrateā€¦ Thinking more along the lines of programming for error correctionā€¦

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BINGO! :smiley: I keep saying this & keep hearing put it at 3Mbps, that chromecast is too under powered blah blah network blah balh blah.

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Well, now Iā€™m getting a Player Error Could not play live stream on iOS from the Outside. Inside it works Ok but not Outside. This WAS working before. Double checked my Port Forwarding and nothing changed there. Oh, works Ok thru Plex on the Outside too. I suppose I could start bouncing stuff but donā€™t really want to.

Did I jinx it? Or just point out yet another thing that doesnā€™t actually work? hehe

I regularly use remote streaming outside my home from 2 different Tablos, no issue at all. I travel a lot for work so this was one of the key features for choosing Tablo.

One of the Tablo sites has very poor upstream so I have to keep it at the 1Mb setting but the second site can handle full quality without issue.

Thats to Iphone / IPad & WIndows PCā€¦ Again, no chromecast / android product to test though.

Sorry, off topicā€¦ :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Yeah, not sure what thatā€™s all about now. I remember when I was setting up the Port Forwarding I had a hell of a time getting that going because my Commycast Router wont NAT from different inside and outside Ports, only the same. I only got it working after Radojevic told me you can change (in the box) the inside port number to be the same as the outside on the Tablo configuration screen. NOWHERE in the How-To did I find this anywhere. I emailed Support and asked them to add a line under the Configuration screen shot for this and save people some time hunting that one down.

I use Plex for streaming outside the house so I havenā€™t really used it other than to check it out. So Iā€™m sure Iā€™m no help on this one. My Plex server is on a gaming computer so itā€™s got a lot of power to stream. I try & get as much as I can thru that!

For what it is worth @riffy

I started to follow along to this thread 2 days late but it got a bit out of hand for may taste.
Regarding previously recorded content. I never use the Tablo for live viewing, who does that in 2016 :wink:
Gen 1 Chromecast user for long time running, generally happy with it.

Butā€¦!!! You need an extremely stable signal. Any disturbance in the recorded stream (ATSC breakup can be quick) will result in the Chromecast freezing and taking a considerable long time to re-lock to the stream. I have verified it is an RF/Antenna/Transmitter/Reception issue causing the breakup in Chromecast playback of sub-par recordings by playing back with my phone. There is signal breakup (at the same exact point) but it doesnā€™t greatly affect user experience as it does by freezing up for up to 5 seconds sometimes as it done on the Chromecast.

My small opinon is most peoples issues with the Chromcast is they have a crummy antenna stack or are trying pull in distant stations and are ignorant that they are unable to take in a reliable signal to begin with. Donā€™t even get me started on people with indoor antennas, that is just foolish in 95% of households.

Maybe every Sports nut on the Planet?

Yeah I also noticed this too. It was worse when I had an older antenna on Tablo (rabbit ears!) but even with a good one on it like I have now. It still creates files that freeze chromecast. I do use an indoor antenna but all the towers are like 10 mile radius from me & a 30 mile antennaā€¦ itā€™s always crystal clear.

As a side note Iā€™ve used NextPVR for a long time casting broken up TV signals (with my fancy rabbit ears) just fine for years @ 1080p. I do watch live TV when the weather is bad & other things.

Actually the only reason I bought the Tablo was to move the DVR/Live TV service off my server. One less thing to keep up to-date & running smoothly. Also switched to linux on my server too & me & MythTV didnā€™t get along so well. LOL

Sports still a thing? :smiley:

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Most Geeks arenā€™t interested in Sports but I watch some. :wink:

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Yup, gotta watch some while you fast forward the Super Bowl to get to the commercials. :wink:

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See? :slightly_smiling:

Funny as all hell too! LOL

Hey guys,

Thereā€™s lots going on in this thread - lots of requests for a detailed break down on the existing set up we use for Chromecast. So here it is:

When the Chromecast functionality was developed for Tablo, we tested casting the stream on as many playback devices as we could (several Android tablets and smartphones, lots pf PCs) and on as many different networking configurations as possible too. We did this on all of the Tabloā€™s recording qualities (From 10Mbps to 2Mbps) on both wired and wireless setups.

The experience in testing was, and still is stable. We donā€™t see the reproducible hiccups that have been reported to us a few times. Even when weā€™ve downloaded the exact same recordings our users are using, and played them locally on a Chromecast here, it worked fine. Even with the exact same segments of video which 100% reproducible on the customer network, it played smoothly here when casted.

I personally use the Tablo on a wireless setup sending an 8Mbps for both live streaming and recorded video from the Tablo without any issues. I temporarily had it 10Mbps, but the space it took on my hard drive and the minimal buffering I saw the Chromecast wasnā€™t worth it.

However, the above approach notes something we see too often in the forum ā€œIt works for me, it must be your networkā€.

With that in mind, itā€™s possible that our network setup is a little more robust than the average one. Thatā€™s why we have multiple networks in the office - ranging all over different Wi-Fi channels and bands for testing purposes.

As quoted in our original reply above ā€œWe certainly havenā€™t dismissed these complaints; in most cases, weā€™re usually able to trace this to a network issue.ā€

That really is the truth. We rarely get tickets about Chromecast, and when we do, lowering the bitrate to the device usually solves the problem.

As noted by a few in this thread, the Tabloā€™s video originates from an OTA signal, which isnā€™t the same thing as a Netflix or YouTube stream. Itā€™s possible (though despite testing it, we have not seen this) that a ā€œweakerā€ OTA signal could cause issues with the stream.

Weā€™ve got both optimal and less than optimal channels here in our office, so revisiting this will be easy. Weā€™re going to direct our efforts here now, as it appears this is a bit of a theme for the few having issues with Chromecast.

Itā€™s also worth noting weā€™ve made some optimizations to the way some bitrates can ā€˜peakā€™ in the new firmware upgrade, which is coming soon. However, if any of you would like to try the beta now (if youā€™re not already on it) we can send this to your Tablo. Just send me a PM with your Tabloā€™s MAC address and Iā€™ll flick the switch from here.

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