Continuing need for reset

Support & Troubleshooting
1

A few days ago, I lost the contents of my recordings (1.5G) by doing inadvertenty  doing hard reset. I won’t do that again.


The core issue is that since the last Tablo update, I’m having to reset the Tablo on what seems to be a daily basis.

This morning, I attempted to watch live TV Tablo using a Roku 3. Stepping through the menu, everything seems fine until I get to the live TV channel list. When I select a channel, it looked as if it was loading and then a blank screen. After a bit, when I press back a couple of times, the Roku resets. I’ve repeated this a few times.

Again, on the Roku, when I go into watch recordings, the menu pages look the same EXCEPT the show icons are are blank with no photo snapshots. When I try and watch a show, screen blinks but stays on the same page.

Also, when I try and watch using the Tablo app on my iPad, there was an error … wouldn’t connect. I now can’t connect to the Tablo at all.

Using Safari on my iPhone, I see the Tablo and it appears to sync properly, but when I try and watch live TV, it gets right to the point when the live would play and just sits there, no video. It has the play button etc, but it doesn’t play. It hasn’t hung but it doesn’t play.

I have a 4 tuner which I have had for about 2 months or so. So far, before the update, I’ve maybe only had to reset 2 or 3 times. Now it seems I reset on a daily basis.

Help!
2

Open a support ticket and wait until Monday.
Otherwise, I would do these 3 things and hope for the best:

Use the Tablo reset button, but just a momentary press, to bring Tablo’s brain back online. Test.

Make sure all your Tablo devices are up to date. Update, if not. Who knows if your factory reset dropped you back a firmware level and now your Roku and tablet are newer, trying to do newer things than the Tablo can.

If you still have issues, I would take the hard drive over to a computer and do a format of the hard drive (but not a quick format) in order to let the hard drive smarts test every sector and mark any newly bad sectors, bad. You lost all your shows anyway. When you reconnect the drive to the Tablo, hold down the reset button for 10 seconds to do a factory reset again.

Probably best to open a ticket and just wait until Monday.
Best of luck.

3

I haven’t lost anything but I do have to reset frequently. I have been working with tech support to resolve it.

4

Yes, the reason I lost the whole disk is that I inadvertently held the reset to long (> 6 s) and carried out a factory reset. Doing a regular reset should be OK.


I’m pretty sure the HD is OK.




5

I am having the same issue. I have to reboot tablo throughout the day. Since there is not a remote reboot option (maybe I missed it ) it is a tad annoying.

6

I am experiencing the same issue with my Tablo 4-tuner since the latest firmware update. I have to reset the Tablo usually once every day or two now or I can’t play anything on my Roku and the iPad app can’t connect.

7

@gradman2k3 @Auream @Tomwilley


All, it’s definitely not the expected ‘use case’ for you to have to reboot/reset your Tablo at all! 
If you’re doing this frequently, something is definitely not right and we would both benefit from taking a look at your Tablo. 

If you’re still having issues, send me a ticket as soon as you can and we’ll take care of you.
8
A few days ago, I lost the contents of my recordings (1.5G) by doing inadvertenty  doing hard reset. I won't do that again.

The core issue is that since the last Tablo update, I’m having to reset the Tablo on what seems to be a daily basis.

This morning, I attempted to watch live TV Tablo using a Roku 3. Stepping through the menu, everything seems fine until I get to the live TV channel list. When I select a channel, it looked as if it was loading and then a blank screen. After a bit, when I press back a couple of times, the Roku resets. I’ve repeated this a few times.

Again, on the Roku, when I go into watch recordings, the menu pages look the same EXCEPT the show icons are are blank with no photo snapshots. When I try and watch a show, screen blinks but stays on the same page.

Also, when I try and watch using the Tablo app on my iPad, there was an error … wouldn’t connect. I now can’t connect to the Tablo at all.

Using Safari on my iPhone, I see the Tablo and it appears to sync properly, but when I try and watch live TV, it gets right to the point when the live would play and just sits there, no video. It has the play button etc, but it doesn’t play. It hasn’t hung but it doesn’t play.

I have a 4 tuner which I have had for about 2 months or so. So far, before the update, I’ve maybe only had to reset 2 or 3 times. Now it seems I reset on a daily basis.

Help!

I can’t comment about the reset but I can comment about iphone and safari with the issue you described:

"Using Safari on my iPhone, I see the Tablo and it appears to sync
properly, but when I try and watch live TV, it gets right to the point
when the live would play and just sits there, no video. It has the play
button etc, but it doesn’t play. It hasn’t hung but it doesn’t play."

I have the same issue and when I attempted to use Chrome it worked fine.  For some reason (possibly ios8) Safari is not streaming anymore like it did before.

9

@scarzz We’ve confirmed this is an issue with iOS 8. It looks like the issues hurting the Tablo web app are affecting others, too - and it’s already been brought to Apple’s attention. Hoping for a fix ASAP. In the meantime, Chrome doesn’t seem to have any issues (it’s not native).


10

Hi Guys,

I thought that you’d be interested on an update problem of needing to do daily resets after the last Tablo update which I reported both here and to Tablo support back on the 4th of August.

10/6
Tablo support (David) contacted me by email … asking me to better describe the problem, what device etc and which Hard drive I used. I replied the same day … so far so good. 

Same Day … David contacted me again asking for more details about the hard drive.

10/7
I replied to David

Same day he replied: His suspicion was the WD drive I was using and asked to try a new drive. If I didn’t have one, then he suggested to run Tablo without a drive.  - Standard debugging to narrow down the problem.
I didn’t actually think that it was the drive as this problem ONLY manifested itself after the update. But whatever … it was worth a shot

10/8
Running without a hard drive. Tablo hung and I needed to reset as before.
So from my engineering logic - Tablo +Hard Drive  hung, Tablo without hard drive hung … hence not hard drive.

Same day David got back to me. His logic still pointed to the Hard drive … I still can’t figure this out. He recommended me to buy a new drive.
He did also mention an issue that others were seeing due to a sensitivity of Tablo … "Tablo’s sensitivity is inherent with the type of kernel the Tablo is currently using."

I sent an email asking what did David suggest as the next step …normally he responded with an hour.

10/9
I asked again about next step
David responded but this time saying that there seemed to a problem with email … he wasn’t seeing the full email history … although I was in my emails.
He recommended that I buy another drive … no real reason why, given our previous debug experiment - from my email reply l  "I’m confused. It seems that the the drive has been proven to NOT BE THE POINT OF FAILURE."

10/12 No answer from Tablo - I suppose when the only solution you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail or a "suspect hard disk."
Against my better judgement I went and bought a Seagate USB 3 portable drive … $140 as recommended.

10/13 - Had to reset the Tablo again … I wasn’t the Hard drive … I just wasted $140!!

10/14 - Asked Tablo support was there a way for me to reset the Tablo online. I’m doing it enough, I wanted to be able to do it remotely

10/14 - David answered … seems he saw my emails after all
He said I couldn’t reset but  there was a mode that I could set up and allow him to view internal logs … Candidly, I have thought that he would have done that before telling me to buy a drive … but whatever, I set the "heartbeat mode: up and left it for David to interrogate.

10/15 
Pinged David asking for progress … nothing

10/17 - Pinged again asking for any progress - nothing … no answer.

10/17 later I received this email - I can’t tell if this is the same David or not.
"Hi there,
I just wanted to follow up with you regarding your Tablo support ticket. We haven’t heard from you in a couple of days.
Please contact us when you get a chance, so we can work to resolve this issue.
Thanks,
David Gauthier
Customer Support

10/17 - I responded to the mail asking for help … No Answer

10/20 - I responded again 

10/28
So here we are a week later and no response.
As far I can tell there is a real issue with Tablo. 
I think that what customer service does it is tell customers that the problem is in their equipment and then simply ignores things … at least that’s my experience so far. I’m open to change my opinion.
And … just to be clear on the apple comment above. We are connecting via a Roku 3.


I bought the 4 tuner device and thought that it was great at the start. Maybe not the slickest interface but it was new and I expected it to get better.
Then we got the new update … The interface improved but everything else went down the plug.

 I never imagined that it would turn out to be a piece of junk. My wife’s sick of me and the Tablo … just bombed out during the world series. The Giants score is bad enough without this as well ;-(

I am very disappointed in Tablo’s customer service.

Maybe I’m unlucky with my unit. Maybe Tablo replacing it would help. I’m $600 into the piece of junk and it can’t make through though the day unattended.

I’ll be interested if Tablo respond to my tales of woe. 

I’ll keep you all posted 

Tom




11

Oh geez @tomwilley … my sweetie won’t have anything to do with Tablo either.


Look, Tablo treats us like QA testers… developing a product as fast as they can and releasing untested updates… relying on the support group to raise QA issues. 

If you have the patience for this, then don’t treat support as a support group, instead as a QA team. If you don’t have patience for this, avoid the support group at all costs.


Look, this Roku/Tablo reset issue is new… who knows how long it’s going to take for a Roku app update or Tablo firmware update to fix it.
 
Support has acknowledged this issue…
http://community.tablotv.com/discussion/863/roku-live-tv-and-auto-delete-recordings-cause-tablo-to-hang#latest

@Grandy and @ltldevl are acting as good QA testers and helping Tablo identify root cause…
http://community.tablotv.com/discussion/935/icons-are-blank-and-no-recorded-show-plays#latest 

I don’t have patience for this (I have learned to hate tablo firmware updates) so I would say, do as I do, do another factory reset… This should fix you up, as it did me.

My sweetie says she still hates Tablo and that no one cares for it and that I’m wasting my time on this post. She says to say it three times. My sweetie really doesn’t care for tablo.

12

@tomwilley 


David here. 

We are absolutely not disinterested in your case. We had some issues with our email provider last week, but this was addressed quickly and we haven’t missed any emails since. 

That being said, there’s clearly still something amiss here, and we will investigate on our side. I’ve sent you three replies that don’t seem to be included in your post, and I haven’t had anything from you (in any inbox) since 10/20.

Our ticket queue is cleared every single weekday - that means 0 tickets and 0 customers waiting on a response. We strive to be as responsive and diligent as possible with our customer service. We want to solve this just as badly as you do. I’ve since forwarded you my last response from my personal email, and PM’d it to you on this forum. I hope it reaches you.

You can always call me directly at 1-844-TABLOTV if you’d like to speak over the phone.

13

You’re not alone in this.  I’ve had the same problem since the last firmware update.

Often I will go into Tablo on roku at night to see all the thumbnails missing.  If I try to watch a recording, it just flashes a blank screen and goes right back to the previous screen.  Once I restart Tablo, everything is fine.

This has happened to me 4 evenings in a row now and I notice that when Tablo is in this state it is also missing all recordings it should be recording until it is resets.  Something is definitely wrong since the last firmware update.

14

Actually, looking over the thread above again more carefully, it seems like a lot of people are having this exact problem.

Support, will you fix this in the next firmware update?

15

Could be a hard drive issue - have you tried running your Tablo with another USB HDD?

16

@belgiangenius @TabloSupport has said they have been working on this and it will be in the next firmware upgrade. It is a pain because you don’t know when it happened… Maybe a Last reboot time? or a Uptime counter in the settings screen would be nice

17

@belgiangenius you’re right, recordings don’t record after the Roku interaction causes the Tablo to require a reset. Good for you in sharing your experience here.


Free yourself from your old recordings. 
Free yourself from this 2.1.16 madness.
Lower your expectations.
Perform a factory reset, wait 24hrs, then setup your schedules again.
This stabilizes the 2.1.16 release (on the same hard drive @theuser86) and assures your new recordings happen.

I’ve never seen Tablo rush out a special bug fix and they don’t seem to interested in wrapping up these threads with an explanation. A factory reset has worked for me and kept me from abandoning Tablo all together. I’ll likely stay exactly as I am until this issue reoccurs or the next Tablo update has been released for a month or more. For the last 4 firmware releases I’ve been waiting for one that wasn’t riddeled with bugs, which I could park my Tablo on. I will not wait any longer. I’m hopeful for 2.1.18 but I won’t be an early updater if I can at all avoid it. 

My next step is to remove the hard drive and leave Tablo as a live TV streaming device and abandon all hopes of it being a dvr. 

Anyway, I know how frustrating this new bug is… and here is a solution.

18

I had similar issues with my first 4T TabloTV

  1. Constant rebooting on Roku 2 ethernet connected
  2. Constant buffering on Roku 2 ethernet connected
  3. 1/4 of above two issues as bad using Airplay to AppleTV but still not acceptable.
  4. 1/3 of reboots required unplugging TabloTV as pushing blue rest button did nothing (Blue lights stayed on solid, not blinking as it should on reset)
  5. the box was quite warm, warmer than 18W should feel (I’m a EE) so I put ice in a bowl on top of the unit and the buffering and hangs “dramatically” improved until the ice melted.

Clearly a defective unit.

David replaced my 4T TabloTV. The replacement is 1000x better, but the above issues still occur. I have to blue button reboot the TabloTV about every 3 days and once every 10 days or so unplug to reboot as blue reboot button does nothing.

These issues are clearly firmware issues, but that is good news! They can be fixed (unlike the hardware issues that their competitor SimpleTV has with their boxes. I had SimpleTV 2 and the list of hardware issues is too long to discuss here) but it takes time to debug and come up with what I suspect will be both kernel and Roku app solutions.

I write software (25+ apps in the Apple Store) so I know software is hard, even with an unlimited budget (if you are an Apple Dev as I am, you know the many frustrations we have with Apple’s SDK), which TabloTV doesn’t have.

Their AppleTV app I have found to be much more stable with little stuttering and very little handshake interaction to cause any TabloTV box reboots. I believe most of the hangs and reboots to be caused by communication interrupts on the Roku side that the TabloTV try’s to gracefully handle, and does so much of the time, but isn’t able to 100% of the time! leading to lockouts and reboots.

If you are frustrated with your Roku /TabloTV crashing, and can afford a $75 refurb Apple TV (and you already have snow iPad, iTouch or iPhone) I would recommend you give up on the Roku find now. Any Roku user knows of all the firmware issues with Roku 2/3 independant of the TabloTV that causes it to reboot daily all by itself.

With TabloTV now having a full time Roku coder, I have no doubt they will get the Roku solution much better, but due solely to kernal issues in the Roku, I doubt it will ever be as solid as the AppleTV and Airplay solution, because of Apple’s better written kernel.

Just one now pretty happy 4T TabloTV owners thoughts…

19

I have several Roku 3’s.  Some are refurbs.  All solid as a rock.  Not sure what you are talking about.

20
David replaced my 4T TabloTV. The replacement is 1000x better, but the above issues still occur. I have to blue button reboot the TabloTV about every 3 days and once every 10 days or so unplug to reboot as blue reboot button does nothing.

Yup, that sounds familiar with 2.1.16… Factory reset and this final need to reset regularly should go away. It has for me. One of the folks working with support, suggested this is due to (unexpected) upper limits being hit within the code.

I would suggest this is because Tablo does not QA with real world usage scenarios or pre-release with any real world units.

Eitherway, I accept now, that my Tablo must be like the developers units and be freshly reset to use a new firmware without “unexpected” issues occurring.

But hey… To those with the patience or willingness to reset the device regularly… Trudge on.