Loading Message

Support & Troubleshooting
1

I have had my Tablo 4 tuner for almost 3 month. Over the last 1.5 weeks, I have noticed that when I watch live TV or a recorded show, that I am getting the Loading message. The weird thing is it is hit and miss. It is not constant. My settings for Max Recording is the HD720 - 3 Mbps.

I am using a Roku Ultra with the Tablo App on it to view my OTA channels. I also have a WD Elements 4TB USB hard drive.

My roku is hard wired in and my Tablo is connecting to my home network over WiFi at the 2.4GHz band. I did notice on my router that my 2.4GHz band had the mode configured to be Up To 217 Mbps.

When I did my channel scan, all my channels came in with the green dot so I am assuming that means great signal strength.

So, my questions are:

Does my HD play into the fact that I am getting the loading message?
Would I be better served with an SSD hard drive for better performance? Assuming that the laoding message is due to my hard drive and the buffering it is doing
Should I change my Tablo to connect to my 5.0 GHz band?
I am at a loss as to why I am getting the loading message.

I have also opened up a support ticket with Tablo to try to get their perspective. I also figured I would post here to see what some of the long time cord cutters had to say.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Steve

2

This - the most likely cause of your problems. 2.4GHz is the best Tablo can do but it’s by no means sufficient.

3

802.11n dual band WiFi with MIMO

Tablo supports 5 GHz Wireless N too.

4

Since the tablo unit is a many clients to one server possibility, many users have the tablo unit hardwired and clients using 5GHz or wired.

Tablo supports 5 GHz. But 5 GHz has issues going through walls and longer distances.

1 Like
5

From what I have seen the Atheros chip it has in it doesn’t support 5GHz. I might be mistaken though, wouldn’t be the first time.

Even if it did, 5 GHz by itself has short range and doesn’t carry well through walls and other obstructions.

Edit:
I believe it has the Atheros AR5B22 chip Just looked it up again and I’m mistaken. It does have 8-2.11n over 5GHz.

operating range
802.11a: 5.170-5.835 GHz
802.11bg: 2.402-2.494 GHz
802.11n: 2.267-2.484 GHz / 5.170-5.835 GHz
Bluetooth: 2.4000-2.4835 GHz

6

Switch to 5ghz channel and see if it changes.

7

The other issue here is the Roku - Roku has a nasty habit of using WiFi Direct between the Roku and its remote on the very same band as your home WiFi and at a higher amplitude than the native signal. I’m damned if I can figure out what the Roku thinking behind this is, but it’s well documented and cause terrible interference with WiFi on the 2.4 GHz band.

8

Thanks for the suggestions. I will change to 5GHz and see if it gets better.

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