Is Tablo simply a great concept that was badly implemented?

I purchased a Tablo for OTA television and connected it to an outside antenna (Clearstream 2 Max). It was horrible. Stations would cut out making use of the Tablo intolerable so it was shelved for a while. I then decided to connect it to the outside antenna (Clearstream 4Max) that our main television was connected to as that television had pretty much perfect reception. The Tablo functioned as before so I installed another antenna for the Tablo along with an LTE filter. My house now looks like an antenna farm but the Tablo still will not work properly. It is wired to the network and the Roku boxes are wired. I disconnected network cables and tried its WIFI with no improvement. As a final attempt, I bought a Fire TV stick and once again, we had the same results. So I ask, is Tablo simply a great concept that was badly implemented?

Tablos have an internal splitter, so a signal that works well directly connected to a TV, may be problematic with a Tablo unless you have an amplifier installed.

My Tablo has been working well for many years, and my antenna is in the attic (with an amp)!

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The Tablo works fine for the many thousands of users that have it. I would encourage you to submit a trouble ticket and let the Tablo support folks look at it. It’s possible you have a bad unit, or there is just some issue with the antenna setup. Either way, the support folks can analyze the signals coming in and figure out a solution.

Good luck!

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We have 3 Tablos: 1 - 2 tuner (OG); 2 - 4 tuner (OG).
Youngest is 6 years old, oldest is 7.

We use Rokus, and Google Chromcast with Google TV devices, all via wifi.

Issues we had:

  1. Indoor antennas could not provide strong, stable enough signal.
  2. Weak signal, and intermittent signal (seasonal) channels crashed the Tablo.

Our 4 - tuner Tablos share an antenna (Antop 400-BV) that’s mounted on our roof, and use wifi to connect to a wireless router 3 feet away.
I hate cable clutter. :wink:
The 2 - tuner Tablo is connected to the same type of antenna, but it’s sitting on a dresser in a 2nd floor bedroom, and uses wifi to connect to a wireless router 75 feet away on the 1st floor.
No amplifiers, nor additional filters used.
All Tablos are picking up channels 8 to 45 miles away with no issues.
Well, one issue… they only pick up channels from broadcast towers the antennas point at most directly.

Since weak signal channels tend to crash our Tablos, we don’t add them to our channel lists.
Some channels come in clear, and strong at various hours of the same day, or only during certain weeks, or months.
I gave up on those channels a long time ago.
Life’s too short.

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Here’s a possibility for your problems. Some users have reported broken coax connections to the system’s mother board, particularly on refurbished or re-sold units. This obviously reduces the amount of signal getting to the tuner units. These connections appear to break if the user attempts to “make a tight connection” of the female connector on the wire to the Tablo box.

A service ticket to Tablo HQ can help. They can look at the diagnostic info and offer some practical suggestions.

I have an original quad unit from 2015 and it has been flawless since connecting to an outside antenna.

I have the same problem as Marbil. I’m using a Tablo Dual Lite with Nvidia Shield over a 1GB LAN.
Antenna connection is via straight run of RG6 Quad Shield cable.

With the antenna connected directly to my Panasonic TV, I get great picture & audio.
For what its worth, the TV reports ~90% or better signal strength on my primary local channels.
Moving antenna connection to Tablo results in occasional pixelation and periodic audio dropouts.
I’m about to give up on this thing.

I use my TabloTV dual tuner as input to NextPVR and it has a better reception and scans weaker channels than my HDHR and Hauppauge ATSC tuners from the same source.

Of note historically users have reported built in TV offers better quality then standalone device.

Martin

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