Too early to add new Category: My Network Tablo is Now a Brick?
A category for creative ways to use Networked Tablos if you’re in a market where the majority of channels have switched to MPEG-4.
Channel 20 in Austin TX works on my TV but not Tablo
Tablo support said it was scrambled. Wonder if it is MPEG4 and if MPEG4 can be added to Tablo.
Is it possible that if mpeg-4 becomes more prevalent that Tablo could fix the issue by providing a firmware update to the network tablo devices? It is just a software codec. Unless there is some hardware issue I’m not aware of that is involved somehow?
I wonder how the TV is able to descramble the “encoded” signal then? Anybody know? It must be similar to how DVD players can only play dvds for their locked “region”.
Edit: after very little research, I see that ATSC 3.0 standard includes DRM (digital rights management). That’s as much as I know and will need to do more research at a later time.
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DVD regions are not actually scrambling. I used to buy DVD’s from other countries and I had DVD players set to ignore the region code and output the correct format NTSC. What’s happening here is just another example of companies not all sticking to the standard.
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Sadly, they (broadcasters) are sticking to the standard. It’s just something not well utilized until now and some tuners never assumed the other codec would be used. But, if Nuvyyo can figure out how to make MPEG-4 work for us… that would be great. Strangely, Tablo network units convert the mpeg2 into mpeg4-ts (though probably not exactly like ATSC 1.0 MPEG-4 (??)).
Someone posted on avsforum that the tablo HDMI model worked. But who knows. I’m sure the OG network models with the older internals probably never will.
Correct. We’re talking the networked Tablo devices in particular, with regards to not handing ATSC 1.0 MPEG-4. Unless Nuvyyo has some good news in that regard.
I haven’t read the standards in detail and that’s why I said “companies”. If the broadcasters are adhering who does that leave?
For network devices all the magic transcoding from mpeg-2 input stream to a h.264 HLS file use to be done by the actual pixelworks(vixs) software stack. It might not be able to transcode an h.264 input stream to a h.264 HLS file.
I have the original Quad
And do you know the station you are talking about is broadcasting mpeg-4. The ATSC 1.0 standard may allow for actual 1080p but in mpeg-2 it chewed up to much bandwidth and 1080i was used. Or at least I have never heard of a mpeg-2 channel in 1080p. Maybe broadcaster will move to mpeg-4 to fit 1080p into the same channel space.
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.