Just got Tablo 2, very unstable, NOT HAPPY

So in an effort to get my parents off their $200 a month cable bill I was moving them to a chord cutting whole house streamed experience. Using an apple TV as the sole connected device I would obtain every station they needed from there. For local stations the Tablo seemed like a complete shoe in, almost too perfect. Accessing the local stations and full dvr support for them through a native apple TV app, and it looked good doing it. So fast foward to today when both the Tablo and the outdoor antenna I was going to use with it arrived. I set the antenna up in the attic as it provided easy access to a cable drop so I could keep that Tablo in a room next to the router, wired.

Setup was great, although the guide data download seemed a little slow. Anyways as I started hitting the main stations to check that their signal quality was strong enough before wrapping up the install I found that ABC was fairly weak. This quickly caused problems as trying to stream a channel too weak to view is causing the Tablo to REBOOT %90 of the time. This then causes the app to become unresponsive as you don’t get any feed back until the tablo comes back online. This is pretty inexcusable. After reading some other post I ruled out HD issues by a) using a powered hub for my initial 500gb drive that I was using, and b) using a 128gb sandisk stick just to test. Neither one improved stability in the Tablo. Hard drive power draw did not seem to be the problem.

Tomorrow I am going to relocate the antenna outside as it is clear the attic isn’t good enough. Still, the fact that the tablo crashes when ever it receives a less then ideal signal is not a good thing and isn’t something I feel I can hand off to my less then tech savvey parents.

One station in my area went off the air not long ago. I didn’t know at the time, and tuning to that channel caused my Tablo to reboot, so I deleted it from my channel lineup. Problem solved… not ideal, but hopefully, it will be fixed in the next release.

There are a couple of ideosynchracies, beyond that, but for the most part, the Tablo has been a really good solution for me, and mostly reliable. One other issue I’ve had is that when I’m set up to record 4 channels at the same time, and I’m watching one of those channels live from some time before those recordings are set to begin, Tablo may reboot or kick me back out to the guide.

A couple of other words of caution… stick only to the recommended hard drives, choose a good antenna for your locations and stationd and get it up high and oriented correctly, and get a wi-fi router with good streaming performance… a lot of folks like the TP Link Archer C7. U,nderpowered routers won’t cut it.

I’m glad to hear that the stability issue with weak channels is just that and nothing more. The antenna is good but a smallish omnidirectional ment to not stand out too much so some stations will break up, I can’t really have the box rebooting when this happens (nore should a tv broadcast receiver be crashing when it receives weak signals, ever), especially if it is currently recording stuff. As far as my router, it’s one of asus’s best 802.11n routers, fairly good processor and ram that beat out anything you would find on best buys shelves at the time. The lack of external antennas made me pick up TPlinks power line kit for a remote AP near the apple TV (and tablo if it was going to be located there) but atm I don’t need it for either. The apple TV is getting a fairly strong signal for being a couple rooms away.

I know the feeling… I wasn’t too happy at first too… Blaming Tablo for the most part… But when I got the right Antenna and the right placement of it… Tablo’s perfect… Yes, it will take a bit of work to get this device to work properly… I highly recommend to get a really good Antenna (Clearstream Direct 2V which am using) and as much as possible set it up outside your house as high enough pointing towards where your local station towers located with no trees blocking or anything… You will definitely see an excellent result… I know I am and my setup is Wireless ( using 5ghz frequency with wifi extenders to compensate range)… I’m using my iPhone, Firestick Tv 2nd Gen. for both tv’s and an iPad to access my Tablo… It all works very well and stable… Don’t give up just yet…

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So after mounting the antenna outside and getting green lights for all but one station, the tablo has been well behaved. Infact I don’t think I have had it reboot once. A couple of times the apple tv app kicked me out but I could never be sure if it crashed or not, while I did have to go through the guide again after opening the app, opening the same channel was instant and it picked up where I left off because the live DVR was still running. Funny enough the station that was red was PBS, after allowing it through though I found it still came through fine most of the time.

Its a shame you can’t rapid fire through channels on this thing but I do have some questions about other peoples experience. When you start viewing a channel, after a couple of second the screen freezes and the timeline pops up on the screen as the app is buffering video, it seems that you are treated to a live feed first and then the app switches you over to the live DVR feed. And the higher the quality of the channel the more jarring this pause is. Anyone else notice it pretty baddly and did upgrading hard drives ever help it? The HD I am using now is a pretty average USB 2.0 from quite some time ago, maybe one of the modern 1tb USB 3.0 (yes I know tablo doesn’t do 3.0 speeds) will be a bit zippier.

Also I havn’t researched it yet but, if you record all new episodes of a show, will the tablo keep recording new episodes as new guide data is loaded in? or does it only snap shot the current 2 weeks and 2 weeks later you need to set up the scheduling again?

Check out your wifi, mate. I thought I had good wifi but it was apparently good for looking at the internets but very poor for video. I replaced the old router wiht one recommended on here and my wifi buffering disappeared.

No worries about the schedule setting. I have some shows scheduled since last year and the Tablo started recording the show again when it came on the air again in September. As long as new episodes show up in the guide, it will record them, no intervention required.

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I also have had issues with video freezing on Apple TV during live playback… can be streaming same channel to my MacBook pro 10 feet away, so OTA signal level isn’t a problem, and both using an AP within 15 feet open air, so WiFi obviously isn’t an issue for either… Power Cycle Apple TV, and the problem goes away for awhile. Android TV and browser don’t have the problem… not sure about the Fire Stick because that thing is so sluggish it’s painful to use, likely replacing with a Roku I had laying around and wasn’t using because it didn’t support DirecTV Now (switched to PlayStation View now, much better package I think…) Can’t get locals on any of those packages, and don’t want to expect internet to be up to watch football… The joys of the rural life!!

The only freezing was for a second or two after I enter a channel. From further testing it looks like the buffering isn’t smooth, if I try and tell the apple tv to go all the way to the right (as LIVE as possible) I can force the situation where I run out of buffer and the video has to stop. If I leave it alone or if I make sure I am a couple seconds behind then I never run out of buffer.

This sounds like a low WiFi speed issue.

What is the make and model of your router? Maybe time to upgrade to Wireless AC.

App needs bug fix?

It is the RT-N56U. I have no problem with reaching the max speeds of my network adapters for the very few times I actually needed to do that. 5 and 10mbps is childsplay.

I turned off the fast live tv startup and will see if that helps, maybe the app is just starting playback before enough buffer is loaded.

Just my opinion but “fast tv startup” is a violation of protocol. IMHO, leave turned off. But feel free to educate me.

Are you quoting WAN or LAN speeds? You know Tablo only operates over LAN. The only time it uses WAN is for updates and the epg.

lolwut?

WAN is not a good description of the internet.
The speeds have nothing to do with the internet.
And you are wrong, the tablo supports streaming your tv over the internet for when you are away from home.

Well I guess you are the exspurt. Its called Tablo Connect and you were not discussing that capability of Tablo in your above comments. Pls let us know when you solve your probems.

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JeffD?
Look at something else… Tablo has a weak tuners and a lot Problems. I get rid of Tablo and went with Tivo.
If you got chance of returning then do it… Read more of the problems that Other have. And don’t listen to others that they saying that they had for years and no problem. With New Tablo they overheat a lot and disconnect your device with out any reason.
Don’t take my word for it just scan the Community reports.

Yup, don’t listen to us. :slight_smile:

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And don't listen to others that they saying that they had for years and no problem.

Yup, don’t listen to us. :slight_smile:

(R -you do such a good job on the form, I just couldn’t resist:sunglasses:)

[quote=“Joseph_Bejm, post:16, topic:11420”]
And don’t listen to others that they saying that they had for years and no problem. With New Tablo they overheat a lot
[/quote]I have 2 four-tuner Tablos (one a few years old, one about a year) and a close relative has a new one… They are all identical and none have “disconnect” or “overheating” issues…

For both of my Tablos I did have Wifi issues that I had to overcome, but they had NOTHING to do with the Tablo other than the fact the Tablo was attempting to send a LOT more data across those streams than we had used in the past.

Yes some people have had issues, and yes some have had defective Tablos but I would guess they are likely less than 5% of the customers… Remember, most who never have any issues, do not search out forums…

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Like I sai8d before. Older Tablo maybe are better then New one. I had two of them and both same problem.
They could change hardware in New Production and now there is problem.

Every one is saying I don’t have proble. So do you thing I’m the Only one? Read others review and their problems.
I said what I have and I don’t recommend Tablo. I went with Tivo and I’m happy with it. I don’t have disconnects. Channel loads right away (No Buffering like with Tablo). Better recording, Stronger Signal on the Tuner. Includes Apps like Youtube, Netflix. Vudu and few others. And if you have those Accounts you can setup search and recordings from those accounts. So it’s more then what Tablo can give me for same price… Just no one want to admit that Tivo is better choice…

So you guys can enjoy your Tablo with problems while I will Enjoy my Tivo with out any…