Roku model 4230X Version 6.2 Build 3672.
Last time, I promise: I record at 720P - Roku/Chromecast. My Tablo is wired through a spanking new ASUS RT-N66U, reputed by others here to be a really good router. Roku 3, but yes, it is wifi; about 15ā from the router. Everything via Plex is perfect, but Live TV and anything recorded with these settings is unwatchable. I truly wish a settings change would fix it. Like many others, I have a wife asking why we donāt just go get Comcast settop and be done with it. She got spoiled by SAGETV; worked perfectly, great interface, tons of options, etc, so we have jumped back years. It is hard to make an argument other than monthly cost as to why we stick with this product which seems to be going backwards in terms of development.
No more from me; Iām tired of it.
But many people reporting the āLoading, please waitā problem are running Roku3s on hardwired networks, so I donāt really see a correlation here.
I use Plex on my Roku3 with the Plex server set to 20mbps. No problems. In my case, I seriously doubt this āloading, please waitā issue is related to bandwidth limitations or Roku3 processing limitations.
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Not sure if this can help as I havenāt read many people reporting this, but Iāve noticed the following behavior from my chromecast:
If I stream to Chromecast from my desktop chrome browser: it freezes frequently and I think my chromecast even rebooted once.
If I play it from my iPhone Plex app: Works perfectly
I feel like the Roku app is suffering from the same issue as Iām getting when Iām playing it from my chrome browser. If this website is right:
Chromecast can support up to 20 mbps so this shouldnāt be a bandwith limitations, just like youāve been saying with the Roku.
I have a Roku 3 and both the Tablo and the Roku are hardwired into the same GB switch. So for me it is unlikely that it is a network issue, or related to having an older model Roku.
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This might be a nice extra option for people who canāt muster enough Wi-Fi bandwidth, but this doesnāt really speak to the problem at hand, which is that folks who were having no problems before 2.2.2 are now having problems. Some of those having problems are not running wireless, so network bandwidth should not be an issue for them. It is not reasonable to say that networks and devices that used to work just fine donāt work now because āā¦60 fps variableā¦is too much data to handle for some networks/devices.ā
Why donāt you guys just address that issue directly, before adding new features, like an additional quality setting? And if you have confirmed that this is a Roku problem, then tell us that so that we can go throw rocks at Roku.
This business about Roku not being able to handle 1080p and/or more than 3.5 Mbps simply isnāt true. Mine is not restricted to 3.5 and I get flawless 1080p from multiple services, including Tablo. And that is via 802.11n wireless. It even works across our wireless bridge, in another building, so basically across three Wi-Fi hops. And the access point in one of the buildings is 802.11g, and that works fine too. And yet other users, who have Roku 3 devices in a wired network environment canāt make it work anymore, so that pretty much rules out wireless as the reason behind the problem. Thereās more going on here than meets the eye.
The only thing that makes any sense to me is that either the Tablo update or the Roku update killed Tablo. And even then, it seems like there would have to be some hardware discrepancies involved. For example, maybe some Tablo devices use different hardware than others. Or all Roku 3 devices do not contain the same hardware. But honestly, if the makers of, arguably, the most mature of all streaming devices canāt build a device that can reliably stream 1080p, thatās just hard to even imagine.
Whatever the issue is, is there just a way to downgrade to the old firmware? Iād rather just go back to what was working.
Thanks,
Jason
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FWIWā¦my Tablo experience has been pretty much flawless for several days now after a factory-reset and seting to 720p.
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As with rabbi, I would really like to go back to the previous rev while other toil in the back room. Wife is ready to call Comcast, and I have found that there are SAGETV units still available.
Beastman: can this really be called a consumer product when it takes constant fiddling with this and that to even watch anything? Lots of consumer products list capability requirements: should Tablo state that it only works if wired, with a certain brand and model of router, no switches, etc, and BTW you become a beta tester? To me the beta testers are actually alpha testers, and all the rest of the Tablo community are beta testers, and it is not going well.
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@beastman, I have a Peplink Balance 30. Itās a business-class multi-WAN router. And the multi-WAN aspect of it has been nothing but trouble for the Tablo, because the way that Tablo authenticates does not consider the fact that an authentication request could come from a different IP address than the Tablo device itself.
For whatever reason, Roku does not use the same authentication routine as the web app. I think the same could be said for mobile devices, but Iām not in the habit of kicking back to watch TV on my iPhone, so Roku has always been the only reliable Tablo client for me. There are times that it would be nice to be able to watch the news, or something like that on my PC, but the authentication is so hit and miss with the web app that I hardly ever even try.
You asked about the bridge devices, and I am happy to tell you about those, but it probably doesnāt apply to most Tablo home users. You see, I have a situation at my office where the wired LANs for multiple buildings are connected together via Wi-Fi. We have a Engenius ENS202EXT outdoor access point on the main building, with Engenius ENS200EXT Client Bridges on the remote buildings. Each remote building has its own wired LAN and indoor access point(s) connected to the client bridge via EtherSwitche(s). Network clients in the remote buildings get internal IP addresses via the DHCP server in the Balance 30 router. So at the end of the day, itās one big happy LAN.
One of the three buildings is my home, so that is where most of my Tablo-watching takes place, although I do sometimes watch on my PC while I am working. And just for fun, I have carried the Roku to the other buildings, just to see how it would work, and it works well everywhere I have tried it - wired, wireless, across the wireless bridges and through the woods.
The buildings are all in close proximity, so weāre not talking about epic Wi-Fi links, but even so, nothing in the wireless system is faster than dual-radio 2.4 GHz 802.11n, so practically speaking it tops out at around 40 Mbps, and that typically drops to 30 Mbps when using the wireless access points on the wirelessly-bridged LANs in the remote buildings. Iām finding it hard to put into words, so please donāt feel bad if you canāt figure out what Iām trying to describe!
And my only point in bringing all of that hoopla up in the first place is that I just havenāt found the Roku 3 and/or itās Wi-Fi connection to be all that fragile. I think that my router is probably a cut above the combo Router/EtherSwitch/Wireless-access-point devices that most home users get stuck with, but at the same time, I have more complexity in my network, and there there is a lot of Wi-Fi gear out there that is faster than mine. And I suspect that most Tablo users wonāt have to face all of the problems that Tablo has with a multi-WAN environment either.
Then again, for a number of years, I made my living building and maintaining networks, so maybe what seems easy to me isnāt so easy for folks from different backgrounds. Maybe marginal hardware and a sprinkling of poor practices combine to cause trouble for Tablo. And for the most part, Tablo lacks any built-in diagnostic tools, so when things go wrong, all that one can do is speculate.
For me, Tabloās greatest weakness has been itās inability to reliably authenticate via the web app in a multi-WAN environment, That, and the fact that the āPreviewā app locks up my Roku and/or makes it reboot if I slip up and hit the wrong combination of skip-ahead and skip-back buttons. And the preview app has been a preview for a long time now. I was really looking forward to seeing a debugged production version of the Roku app when this new crisis cropped up. Which is frustrating, because the new firmware didnāt solve the authentication problems with the web app., so itās essentially of no value to me. As far as I can tell, all itās done so far is to divert attention away from fixing the long-standing issues that are bugging me the most.
And I said I was going to bow out of this thread, didnāt I ? Sorryā¦I canāt seem to shut up about it.
This is my last attempt at trying to bring an attention to this, but can anyone who has the reload / reboot issue with their Roku try to run the 1080p / 60 fps setting through the Plex app on their Roku, and see if it still does it?
Iām asking because I find a similar issue with my chromecast device and using it through Plex from my iphone fixed it for me.
Now Iām no expert but maybe the answer to Roku current issue could be found in Plex Direct Play / Streaming or Transcoding format.
Not sure exactly what you are suggesting; I donāt see how to play a Tablo show directly through Plex. But I can tell you that I have ripped Tablo video, then played through Plex/Roku, and it played perfectly.
Also, I just now played a movie that is on my Plex server through the Roku app for playing stored video, and it plays perfectly too. So for me, this is clearly an issue in the Tablo box firmware.
I would really appreciate if someone from Tablo would explain why they do not make the previous rev, I think it was 2.2.1, available for installation while 2.2.2 problems are being investigate. Right now my unit is only useful for testing; I cannot watch Live TV nor anything recorded, regardless of mode, when I had no such problem with 2.2.1. Why withhold an obvious solution while investigating, instead of this constant stream of āMaybe itās this, have you tried that, I think it is your routerās problem.ā Please explain.
Sorry if I didnāt make myself clear, what Iām suggesting is to run the Tablo app from your Rokuās Plex app.
And find out if it bugs out from there.
Edit: Thereās a Tablo channel that you can add from the available channels on the Plex channel list.
You canāt access your Tablo from the Plex app on the Roku. Not officially anyway.
As well, all current methods of extracting video from the Tablo re-encodes in the video. It is not the same video on the Tablo that is delivered to the Roke video player.
You mean tablo channels gets somewhat blocked and the other channels you have on plex do show?
I wish I could still test it 
There is no official āTablo channelā for Plex.
This is a 3rd party plugin for Plex. It is not official. It has not been updated in a long time. The developer is waiting for the Tablo to complete major firmware updates.