So I have seen this every once in a while since I’ve started using Tablo earlier this year. Just select “Cancel” and move on. Annoying.
However, in the last few weeks this error has started coming up constantly. No change to my setup. Happens on both Google TV and FireTV ecosystems in my house. Everything up to date. Strong TV signals. Restarted everything multiple times. Switching to “pure” OTA TV on the TV tuners is solid with no issues. Same antenna feed.
This is the first time my Tablo setup has started being unusable. Can’t get through a single program without this error. Live TV can be restarted. Some recordings are being rendered unwatchable.
Is this something others are seeing? Is my Tablo faulty after just 6 months? Has the most recent firmware update broken something?
I have basically become a Tablo convert up until now. I’m helping 2 neighbors get started installing their own OTA setups using Tablo. Do I need to put on the brakes? What is going on?
I could unplug the ssd and check operation using the internal drive, but I’m afraid that would trash all my wife’s library of new show recordings. Does anyone know if this will happen, or will the Tablo recognize the ssd contents when I plug it back in?
I finished the OTA Tablo install on my neighbor’s house. To my surprise, we did much better grabbing the signals from another mountain top set of repeaters than where mine are. Perfect signals with no real “trash” showing up. Odd to me, because I have stronger signals with about 4db better SNR than he does. Hmmm.
So this morning I flipped my directional antenna around to grab the signals from those same repeaters. As I expected, signal levels were lower and SNR was as much as 6db lower. SNR was still above 25db which is fine, but not the 30+db I was getting. Low and behold, the “trash” I was seeing in several of my channels (all on 3 transmitter RF channels) was gone. The pixelation and buzzy audio that was tripping up the Tablo was gone.
So how can I get better quality from lower signal power and lower SNR? I did some digging, and found out the “better” TV coming from the “worse” RF signals on the alternate hill are actually fed via fiber from SLC. The original transmitters I was getting “worse” TV from despite “better” RF signals are true repeaters being feed over the air from who knows what other transmitters. Essentially, they are repeating corrupted data despite being “better” RF signals. At least that’s my theory.
I plan to use this alternate tower location for a while to see if it truly does improve my OTA quality (and therefore the Tablo performance). However, it sure looks good to me so far since I made this change.
Just another example of the potential challenges of this OTA TV game.
Sorry to say this is not closed out. I am still seeing random “failure to decode audio” errors in both live feed and recordings played back on my Google TV. I checked the recordings on the iOS version of Tablo and I don’t see the same problem. The recordings are fine. Looks like it’s an issue between the Tablo and the Android version of the client software.