MPEG-4 Compatibility

I’m going to try to track down an email address for them

Here is the link to the list of MPEG-4 stations that was referenced in the video above:

I receive WVEN 43.7 on that list with a network Tablo.

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Add WAPT 16.6 HSN Jackson, Mississippi, USA to the MPEG-4 list.

My 2009 Sharp 32" 720P and 2010 Viewsonic VT2730 27" 1080P sets do not show video, only audio. My 2015 Polaroid 1080P does show the MPEG-4 video, as does my 2020 Vizio 58" 4K TV. I am betting the 2015 Toshiba 55" 1080P will show the video as well.

The Tablo guide is not including 16.6 as a channel in the scan. I’ll submit a support ticket to ask if this new channel can be added.

In my experience all channels the Tablo can recieve show up during a scan even if there is no guide data. Do you mean that you can add it after scanning but there is no guide data or do you mean it doesn’t show up at all during the scan? The scan is separate from the guide so your wording is not clear to me.

If anyone here is receiving any of the channels from this official list (RabbitEars.Info), don’t hesitate to DM me here, or contact our support team. We’d be happy to setup a remote session to do some testing.

Jim,

Sorry for the delay in replying.

In my case, the Channel Scan in Tablo does not show WAPT 16.6 at all. Every one of the 5 TVs, 3 of which are from 2009-2010 that don’t support the MPEG-4 video codec (likely because the design of the internal tv tuner predated the July 2008 addition of the MPEG-4 codec to the ATSC 1.0 standard) and the 2 TVs that do support MPEG-4, were able to detect the presence of 16.6.

My Tablo Quad networked DVR is the only tv tuning device that failed to recognize 16.6 at all. The three old TVs play 16.6 but show a black screen with no error with normal audio. The 2 newer tvs render the channel normally.

I submitted a support ticket to Tablo to look into this.

Also, I discovered that titantv.com, which also uses Gracenote data just like Tablo, does not yet list WAPT 16.6 HSN yet. I wonder if the new channel needs to be added to Gracenote first in order for the channel to show up in the Tablo channel scan.

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That shouldn’t be necessary. The scan, if it finds the channel, would just show a hashmark for the guide data if the guide data doesn’t exist yet.

As Nilex said that should not be the case. I’ve went through the process of getting guide data added myself. The channel appears and you can watch it without guide data until it gets added. This is likely something Tablo will need to investigate.

Thanks Jim and Nilex for the feedback. I just reached my 2 month anniversary as a new Tablo owner. WAPT 16.6 is the first subchannel to be added or modified since my Tablo went live. I wasn’t sure how the channel addition process worked, but figured that it should add the channel and show a “To Be Announced” or some similar message until guide data is properly mapped to the subchannel.

Given that @RD4 reports he receives MPEG-4 channel WVEN 43.7 and he has a network DVR, I figured that this subchannel should at least show up in my channel scan, even if the MPEG-4 video can’t be decoded.

I got a response from Tablo support and responded with the specific problem I am having, which is the channel scan not picking up WAPT 16.6 in the first place.

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Granted Kyle from Tablo Support support access to my Tablo Quad just now. Hopefully, Kyle finds out why WAPT 16.6 is not showing in the channel scan…

We’ve received your session and have begun some testing to investigate. At the moment, we believe it’s possible (though not certain) this particular broadcast could be misconfigured - at least compared to the one @RD4 appears to be receiving without issue. We’d like to get a look at this channel as well, if possible, to gather more data.

I will leave my Quad in support access mode for as long as you need. Thanks for looking into it.

WAPT’s Director of Engineering Eric Head: ehead@hearst.com

I am receiving

36395	23-10	Comet TV 	WUCW 	MINNEAPOLIS, MN 	720x480 (w)	DD2.0

When I scan with my SiliconDust HDHR Quatro, it finds the channel just fine and I can play and record.

When I scan with my Tablo Duo Lite (Tablo Device: 2.2.40, HTML Application:1.9.9 build 227 [202107161457]), channel 23.10 is not displayed as discovered. I will DM you with my contact information.

Supposedly channel 4.7 out of Milwaukee is GRIT-2. I’m already getting GRIT with channel 4-3. I just did a channel scan on my 11 year old Vizio and it did not find a 4-7. And it is not a channel in my Tablo. I’m not going to rescan Tablo currently because I don’t want to lose any channels.

I believe WVEN 43.7 has recently actually switched to 4, just noticed it disappeared after last scan (about 3 weeks ago). I scanned with a Zinwell ZAT-970A I dug out to use for signal meter (also has quality) it gets it but audio only.

RD4, thanks for the followup. I was curious as to why you could receive WVEN 43.7 MPEG-4 audio. With this information, it makes sense now.

Now that there are quite a few subchannels using MPEG-4, I hope that Tablo developers can modify the firmware to recognize and process that codec.

Are there that many channels or sub-channels broadcasting popular content in MPEG-4?

Apparently WKMG 6.6 RF 26 a new local Fl news channel is MPEG4.

Hooked up the Zinwell to check something last night, was flipping around noticed WKCF 18.2 RF 23 Tru Crime, was audio only. Looked at Tablo it had disappeared at same scan 43.7 did, another MPEG4 channel.