I have been using a Tablo 2 for about 4 months, experimenting with different (indoor) antennas and placements within our condo but always ending up with unsatisfactory reception on two channels. We should get very strong signals from our local network affiliates. The details about the transmitter location and power for the channels of interest are here
I am only interested in the first 6 channels on that summary: two (NBC and CW) are off a tower 1.8 miles away on which we have line of sight. The other 4 (CBS,PBS,ABC and Fox) are off a tower 4.2 miles away on which we also have line of sight. Our building is on the top of a hill and our condo is on the top floor of the building. The towers are both fairly close to due west of our building. If I went down the hall to my neighbor’s unit I could see both towers from their window. The closest wall on which I could put an antenna is about the middle of the building.
My television, a two-year old Vizio E-series, is connected to an RCA ANT1450B antenna with amplifier that is located in the middle of the building. It pulls in 5 of the 6 channels flawlessly. For some reason it does not pull in the ABC channel (real 26, virtual 27.1).
I have experimented with several different antennas and locations for the Tablo. Currently I am using a Cable-Cutter Mini on an exterior wall. All our exterior walls run east-west so the orientation is not optimal but I understand that this antenna is omni-directional. In any case, things don’t improve if I move it to an adjacent north-south wall.
Typically when I run a scan on the Tablo I have trouble with the CBS and PBS stations, getting one dot or three dots for them and 5 dots for other stations with transmitters that are much further away. And the scan strengths are reflected in the quality of recordings. Most of the time, recordings on the PBS and CBS channels are so noisy as to be unusable. Sometimes they fail entirely because of low signal strength. I have tried about 5 different antennas and several different locations without any joy.
The only thing I can see about those channels is that they both have adjacent channels. The PBS station at 20 could be masked by the nearer NBC channel 19. However I don’t understand the behavior of CBS at 50 and Fox at 49. They are broadcast from the same tower with the CBS station having a stronger signal but on the Tablo the Fox station is flawless and the CBS station is unwatchable.
Other than adjacent channel interference, which would be a property of the tuner, I can’t think of a reason for getting poor reception on such strong signals. I am willing to try a different antenna but I am restricted to an indoor antenna and, as I said, the only exterior walls run east-west. I have the suspicion that the problem is the tuner, not the antenna, in which case I have devoted a fair amount of money and effort to something that will not work satisfactorily. Most of the shows I would want to record are on PBS and CBS.
Does anyone have suggestions on how I could further diagnose or attempt to repair the situation? Is adjacent channel interference a known difficulty for the Tablo 2?