I scheduled a recording of a football game. When I tried to play it back, I got a message that said “failed to record”, or something similar. If I have a temporary signal dropout, should this cause the entire program to not record?
In short, yes. Even a slight signal loss can cause a big problem. But, somewhat rare (YMMV).
Tablo will attempt to re-start a recording several times before giving up whether it’s at the beginning of a recording or partway through.
What it won’t do is check back later on a very long airing to see if the signal has returned.
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Thank you for the answer. By “several times” do you mean within a matter of seconds? Or what? Is there a way to find out in real time, rather than after the fact, when this failure occurs? That might be something for Tablo to consider in future updates.
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Can you elaborate? Tablo says that it will attempt to re-start a recording several times before giving up (see their response below), but hasn’t (yet) specified the time period in which these attempts occur. I’m trying to determine that if the signal drops for more than a few seconds, will it attempt a re-start. It might be nice to have some sort of notice when this happens so I don’t unknowingly lose the program.
Yes… For most common signal drop out issues, the Tablo will try to restart the recording up to five times in fairly rapid succession.
Could you explain the logic behind giving up on a recording so easily? I suspect most would prefer a few bad spots on a recording rather than losing it entirely.
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There are going to be a few edge cases. That is, a broadcast with a couple of seemingly minor drop outs could cause the failure, and a broadcast with tons of drops might actually record all the way through. I’m not sure if there is a “good way” right now to handle recording failure notifications.
Good reception is definitely recommended.
I would think that a bit more checks and restarts would be in order. I don’t get dropouts often, but when I do they sometimes last for more than a couple seconds, then I don’t learn the program hasn’t recorded until I try to replay it. We lost an entire football game last weekend because a usually reliable channel apparently experienced a signal loss for more than your allotted time frame.
Roger that!
I’m not a programmer, so I don’t know the limits of possible options. But I, and I expect others, would appreciate the option of just recording through the program and its signal drops as totam suggested.
It’s not quite that easy. The Tablo typical network streaming devices transcode the broadcast stream. And IMHO, therein lies the problem. If network streaming isn’t a feature you need, then there’s the new direct attached Tablo DUAL HDMI. It just records the raw ATSC stream (which are large and not necessarily well suited for over the network use).