Our internet has been down all day, and we had several shows scheduled to record tonight. They still show up as scheduled recordings, but there are two problems:
The Tablo’s time is off by over three hours, and if there’s a way to set it manually, I can’t find it.
Our guide data is all empty… the first show that would normally record starts in what my Tablo thinks is a few minutes… live channel guide does not look like it is going to record anything at that time (not that I really need it to) and I can’t find a way to manually record at 8PM (which my Tablo currently thinks it’s 11:30 PM)
Am I just out of luck if my internet provider doesn’t get their act together in the next couple hours?
You can manually set a recording on the web app. There may be other ways as well. That does require an internet connection but you could make a temporary internet connection and set up the manual recordings. Many routers will allow you to plug your phone in via USB and utilize it’s internet connection. It will likely require some set up on your router. The process is fairly simply on my Asus router. Something similar can be done through a wireless hotspot.
Once set up you should in theory only need to connect your phone occasionally for updates. You could even plug your phone in once a day and do forced schedule updates to get limited guide data.
Edit:. The Android app has manual recording as well. Go to the schedule menu and look for the + sign top right.
If they are scheduled, they should record. Your schedule is locked in the Tablo and the only thing that will affect it is loss of power - and then it will resume when power comes back on.
Yes, but if the internal clock on the Tablo is wrong, wouldn’t you need to schedule manual recordings (as Jim suggested) with a time offset to account for the clock difference?
I think Tablo gets its clock time from the app you log in with, i.e. iPad etc. I know that the lan still works if you have a device that will log in. I don’t remember which ones will log in with no internet, but there are experts here that will let you know.
Hmm. You have a good point. It’s worth confirming. Yeah, I don’t remember for sure which ones work without Internet access either. Perhaps @TabloSupport can answer these two questions?
Keep in mind the Tablo is meant to work all by itself without an App when you aren’t home. Using an app would not make sense in that case. Some routers have time and date setting you can manually set like time zones and time url to query. As I recall the Tablo tries to use something like time.nist.gov. Your router may supply the time when an internet connection is not available. I wonder if setting the correct timezone on your router would fix the time issue.
This is very weird, if your internet was only down for 1 day the guide data for everything today should still be there as every night the Tablo downloads the guide data for the next 14 days, not just 24 hours.
So the guide data should have been present, unless the internet went out during your initial setup and it never got to download the complete guide data.
@theuser86 Is correct - this should not cause all data to fail or disappear. If you still have issues, or if/when you’re back online @Supertodd,send us a note. We’ll take a look and see what caused this.
Based on the FAQ the Tablo resets it’s time during startup. I presume it also does so at intervals as well.
We assumed the Tablo just had the wrong time but if the Tablo got the wrong time it probably got the wrong date. Perhaps it tossed out the guide data because it assumed the guide data was for a different time period.
@Supertodd Did you happen to notice the day and year the Tablo thought it was? Maybe 1970?
Thanks Jim. That answers the questions quite well. (I do vaguely remember reading that post before. I’m a bit surprised I didn’t remember some of the details in it better.)
In theory, DNS and NTP servers can be set up on a home network to workaround Tablo (and other devices) needing to contact an NTP server, if the router can’t be configured to do this all by itself. This requires a minimum of intermediate skill level to accomplish and involves more than a few steps.
Its all done on the router or another local device. In very basic terms so everyone can understand.
When the Tablo asks the network for the time you set your router up to say I already checked the time. If the Tablo says I want the time from time.nist.gov then you set the router up so it tells the Tablo I am time.nist.gov. No change needs to be made in the Tablo.
To say it another way from how Jim did, you use a local DNS server to change the IP address returned for time.nist.gov (and whatever other public NTP server is looked for) so that it points to your local NTP server.