I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Alan Smith. I live in Cheshire, Connecticut. I posted on this site last winter asking about “Making The Quantum Leap” which I officially did this past week. I found a 4-tuner Tablo on eBay that was labeled as non-functioning and came with a lifetime subscription. I ended up winning the bidding for less than the cost of a lifetime subscription, so even if I could not get it to work I didn’t loose any money. However, as it turns out, with a little tinkering it is running beautifully. The experience has not been without a little angst but it all worked out in the end.
I am working on wiring my home with Cat6 to run my Roku 3/4, Plex Server, and Tablo. My hope is to try and cut the (cable) cord in the very near future. Thanks for all of the help everyone gave me leading up to this point.
Well, It has taken several days of fiddling to get it to run properly with updates, hard drives, and antennas, not to mention clearing my Chrome history after the latest firmware update. NOTHING has worked on the first try! However, it is amazing what is resolved by the next morning.
Initially, I was having trouble connecting to the wifi (still can’t) so I connected via Ethernet. Every time I moved the Tablo it would restart. I realized that the insides were moving around too much, so I flipped it over and unscrewed the base. The circuit board was not aligned properly which allowed it to move around too much. This could have happened during shipping or could have been the cause of the initial owners issues. Once that was resolved, I connected through Ethernet and went about hard reset and trying to dump the old configurations. It took several attempts to get through. The Chrome browser would get stuck on ‘Connecting’ or ’ Syncing’ indefinitely. Eventually it worked and it required a firmware update which also took several try’s. The hard drive format took a bunch of turns as well as setting up the antenna scan.
With exception of wifi, it all runs fine now. I was able to record shows. Once I get the Cat 6 run from the router to a basement switch, I will move the Tablo next to my Roku 4 and TV. I have a much better antenna (and antenna placement) there which should give much better recording quality.
Cool that you are wiring with CAT6…I myself just implemented MoCA using my existing cable outlets and am getting 600+mb on the backplane (since Tablo itself is only 100mb). Works great and no rewiring required. Glad to see your Tablo is up and running!
For starters, I was unaware Cat 6A existed. Do you think 6A is the way to go at twice the price? I can get a 1000 foot roll of 6 at mono price for $130 but the 6A is $250.
Since you obviously more knowledgable in Cat wiring, the wire comes in 500 MHz and 650 MHz. What does this indicate? I assume the higher number is better (because it costs $300 per 1000 foot roll.
Cat 6 should work ok with 10Gbit as long as you’re not going over 120ft. or so… so you’re probably ok with just 6.
But 6A was developed to maximize 10Gbit and allow lengths of about 340ft.
YMMV
I’ve used both 6 and 6A in datacenters for very small runs of 10Gbit without issues including both shielded and unshielded cabling. But like I said, the “OCD” part of me would go 6A… but bargain basement me might go with 6.
