Yes, the hard drive swap included using the new cable that came with the new drive. And I’ve swapped the Ethernet cable and the port on the router that the Tablo is connected to.
To this point, I’ve just been spending 30 minutes every night searching for and downloading via torrent everything that either my wife or I want to record and watch with the Tablo. That doesn’t help us with local news and some PBS shows that aren’t widely circulated.
@BlueCalcite I would be really curious to know if a different Tablo unit experiences the same issues. Maybe Nuvyyo will take pity on you and swap it out for you? I honestly don’t know what else you can try. I would have really expected the issue to be related to wi-fi connectivity issues, but you ruled that out some time ago.
The only other thing I think you could try would involve you having a smaller available TV. If you had one laying around, you could bring it down right to your Tablo unit and Router. Disconnect everything else that isn’t absolutely necessary from your router/network to get down to just the basics. It would be preferable if you could connect the fire stick via Ethernet to your router (not sure which model you have) and just see how it goes for the day. Don’t stream anything else from it except just that one location. If it still fails in that situation, that it just has to be the Tablo unit that is the problem. I don’t see how it could be anything else.
I purchased an Ethernet adapter a couple months ago for the Fire Stick that’s right across the hall from the Tablo. Ran the cable to it for…maybe a day or two…and all the errors persisted.
I would be really curious to know if a different Tablo unit experiences the same issues. Maybe Nuvyyo will take pity on you and swap it out for you?
I would be curious about this as well and would welcome the opportunity.
For no better reason than to cross one more thing off the list, I purchased an LTE filter and installed it Sunday. There is a tower a half mile away, pretty much in the direction my antenna is pointing. But even Tablo Support didn’t think enough of that potential problem to advise me to purchase the filter. Surprisingly, it worked a little better the little bit I used it Sunday, but by last night I was getting tons of errors again. On two different TVs, my wife and I got the same “Failed to load video error” at seemingly the exact same time (I was watching live TV; she was trying to watch a recording). We both got the error a half-dozen or more times during the 10 p.m. hour and gave up.
@BlueCalcite Have you asked them to swap-out the unit? I mean, I really don’t know what else you can try. I get that they may be looking at the logs and it appears everything is functioning, but it sure seems that you have ruled everything else out. Maybe they could give you a loaner unit to test out? It seems like the only constant in your problems is the Tablo.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming down on support, by the comments I have read on here it sounds like they are a pretty good group.
Not yet. It’s been more than a week since I’ve heard from them, so I may just place a call and ask.
Just curious, if you have plex and a plex pass. Have you considered trying an hdhomerun and setting it up via plex.
See how that performs using their own app and the plex tv dvr functionality. If that works, then again it would point to a defective unit imo.
I wonder if a totally different device might behave or perform differently? I’m actually surprised they have not sent you another unit to try…
I tried to read the entire thread. It sounds like you are having an awful experience. One thing I noticed is that you bought a new router to see if that would make a difference but it is the same model as the old one. Have you thought about trying a different model entirely?
Just curious, if you have plex and a plex pass. Have you considered trying an hdhomerun and setting it up via plex.
I do have a Plex Pass, and that would be an option to move to if I end up declaring Tablo a wasted $400+ investment, but that’s an additional expense I don’t want to incur just to help troubleshoot the Tablo.
One thing I noticed is that you bought a new router to see if that would make a difference but it is the same model as the old one. Have you thought about trying a different model entirely?
I was working on the assumption (correct or not) that there was a better chance that my particular router was defective than that my particular router model was incompatible for some reason. That, and I knew it would be faster to swap the same model into my system for testing. At this point, similar to above, I don’t think I want to buy another one for troubleshooting.
The last e-mail I received from them on March 5 inquired about whether I have an Android TV device, for which they could send me a debug version of the app. I don’t, and I hesitate to even make that additional investment.
Wow, you have probably made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest running Tablo problem 
Wow, you have probably made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest running Tablo problem
I suppose that’s just slightly better than having the record for the largest hemorrhoid.
Sorry for the wait! We’ve just updated your ticket with some next steps. This case has been particularly odd for us, too - usually with the types of symptoms you’re describing, there’s a very clear indicator to the root cause of the issue. It’s been tricky to try and get to the bottom of this so far, which is why it’s taking a little longer than we’d like.
If you want, I think I have a spare 2 tuner homerun you could try. You cover shipping to and from, I’ll send it to you and you can try it out. Your call, let me know if you are interested.
Don’t get me wrong, I love both and they both work well for me.
Just wish there was an easier way to get Tablo recordings into my plex server.
Anyways, let me know and I’ll help you out with some additional testing. I’ll need to make sure I still have it and I’m heading to bed.
I’m not sure how this could be simpler (just saying).
I am not good at scripting, so automating this is challenging for me.
I have Tablo exporter for the Mac. Works great, but sucks copying to a drive or transferring the files across the network. Network speed is not an issue.
And I’d want the commercials removed before moving to plex.
So yeah while not challenging for some, it is for me because I don’t have the time to dedicate to a manual process.
That being said, I’ll definitely take advantage of the new Tablo Commercial Skip. And if it’s a paid service which I’m sure it will be. Then I’m hoping that it will work as advertised.
I appreciate the offer, but they’re going to send me a replacement Tablo to try. If for some reason this doesn’t solve the problem, I may be looking at other products like that.
That’s exactly why I’m not moving any of my Tablo recordings to Plex. Even though I’m collecting recordings of shows I would normally want on Plex, I don’t want to pollute my Plex library with comparatively ugly, untrimmed, commercial-filled content. And I don’t currently have time to edit them all. So for now, my growing collection of PBS History Detectives will remain on my Tablo hard drive.
Completely contradicting everything I just said, as much as I hate commercials in my Plex library, I have absolutely no interest in the Tablo commercial skip feature, regardless of cost. I’m accustomed to just tapping the fast-forward button 8-10 times for each commercial break. That’s easy enough for me for recordings that I’m just going to delete afterwards anyway.
I felt the same way… until I experienced it for a while. 
Blue Cal - similar issues/situation here. Remove all those intentional attenuators and stop touching your antenna setup except maybe to TIGHTEN THE LEADS directly where they attach to the antenna. All evidence in your case and mine point to root-causes being wacky winter & spring weather plus nonoptimal Tablo tuner dB range - and relating to the 4-way-split. Plus known “random” stuff that happens with all wifi setups. I am considering A/B drop-in-replcement tests as well as side-by-side-with-another-split tests. Will a recast in place of the Tablo do better? Would a 2-tuner tablo in place of the 4-tuner do better? How would either recast or hd-homerun or a 2-tuner do in parallel with the 4-tuner-Tablo (yet another split.) It seems best to test a 4-tuner recast next - in parallel with Tablo via another split. ps - like you recently I got sling blue to ensure for local user community happiness aka spousal approval. Btw i am a bit of a wifi expert EE and I can smell wifi issues in your setup. Even the best operating wifi systems will have weird stuff happen from end-user viewpoint occasionally. Note that wifi clients can disconnect/reconnect/migrate from 2.4 to 5Ghz radios “on the fly”. You may want to investigate locking certain mac addrs to certain radio - split the devices up so they don’t all glom onto the same radio - half onto 2.4 Ghz and half onto 5Ghz, for example. Newest wifi-router-hubs allow things resembling simultaneous/bonding of the two wifi radio connections for one client. Some of the new “AX” wifi routers can do these new cool helpful things to various extents. Another “drop-in-replacement” to try is the newest cheapest ROKU. Please note that the interactions and cofactors and bugs that can happen with wifi are effectively infinite. For example, there could be an ancient misbehaving wifi device on your wifi network such as the original chromecast, causing other wifi clients to constantly detach/reattach. Anything is possible in cartoons and software and RF electronics.
The timing of the onset of the problems always suggested something like this, but between removing and applying the 15 dB amp that was always on the line, and adding as much as 30 dB of additional attenuation, I’ve been testing with signal strengths spanning a 45 dB range, all of which were acceptable to my TV receiving the other split from the antenna, but nothing in that range remedied my problems. I can’t believe that, at some point during my testing within that range, my signals weren’t mimicking the signals that everybody else is functioning quite well with.
I appreciate you putting so much thought into this, but somewhere in that mass of posts it describes how I purchased an Ethernet adapter for one of my Fire Sticks. I stretched a cable from the office (where the modem/router/Tablo all reside) to the bedroom across the hall and the errors continued via Ethernet. I didn’t continue this test for more than a day or two, but it showed me enough to rule out WiFi (at least as the ONLY cause; but the fact that Plex and Sling all stream effortlessly and perfectly via WiFi leads me to want to eliminate it from contributing in any way to my problems).
At this point I’m just going to wait for a replacement to arrive before thinking any more about this. My head hurts.