Multiple markets with overlapping channels

New Tablo Quad user. I’m 40 miles north of one large city, and 35 miles south of another. I have an Antop 400-BV Antenna which receives about 55 channels from both cities. While most of the stations are unique, one station is CBS in my primary (35 mile city), and something else in the secondary (40 mile city). I spend 90% of my watching time in the primary, and less than 10% in the secondary. If I use my zip code, I get all of the stations I want from both except the one that overlaps, which defaults to the secondary, leaving me without CBS. If I use a zip code in the primary, I get all of the primary stations, and none of the secondary. This may be fine, but I lose 3 PBS stations in the secondary that I would like to have, plus the secondary network stations. I’ve played with different zip codes and none of them give me the secondary while keeping CBS from the primary. It occurs to me that adding a second Tablo dual lite and setting its zip code differently would get me the additional secondary stations, but also cost me more than I’m ready to spend. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Yes, ask @TabloTV to have their guide data provider add the channel guide data for the additional channels you want in your zipcode.

Use their support ticketing system to make it official:
https://support.tablotv.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Thank you! Done.

Helpful for me, too. I have a similar antenna, and a dual tuner. I live in the North Georgia mountains and get signals from 3 different cities - but only my closest zip code will get the guide info. Would be very helpful to see ALL the distant stations in my zip code.

I didn’t respond after this was resolved, so responding now with the resolution. I contacted Tablo support. They made a change to the guide data for my zip code to show CBS on the guide so it matched what I was receiving. I had to rescan the channels and everything was fine. I did, however, give up on the secondary channels because the signal was borderline and inconsistent. I settled on the channels from my primary market only, and have been happy with that.

On a separate and unrelated issue, I had my antenna cable split between three TVs and the Tablo. My signal is weak enough that I occasionally would lose signal for several hours. I finally realized that I wasn’t using the direct to TV connection, so I disconnected the 3 TVs from the antenna and terminated the unused splitter connections with termination resistors. Since then, I’ve not had any problem with a weak signal.

If you kept the splitter in the circuit, you will still have a reduction in signal strength whether or not you are connected to the other TV’s. You would be much better off replacing the splitter with coaxial coupler similar to this:
https://smile.amazon.com/VCE-Coaxial-Connector-Extension-Adapter/dp/B0107LH932/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2TUMT1971JLSY&keywords=rg6+coupling&qid=1578968835&sprefix=Rg6+coupl%2Caps%2C344&sr=8-3

Thanks. I had thought there might be some loss with the splitter still but was waiting to see if I would lose signal with only one connection thru the splitter. That was going to be my next step if I still had a problem. So far it’s been good the way it is. I have a central distribution hub where all the low voltage wiring terminates. The splitter is an 8 way OnQ splitter and is there whether I use it or not. Next step will be to bypass the splitter and go to a straight connector.

Per Amazon, your passive splitter has an 11db loss per port. Having other TV’s connected shouldn’t make any difference to your Tablo, each port has the same loss. It’s possible that you had a high impedance connection at the splitter to your Tablo and removing the other cables and moving the Tablo’s cable helped or one of the other cables has a problem. Occasionally a stray shield wire can come in contact with the center conductor and short out the signal.

Also, if you only have a need for a 4 way splitter, you would be much better off replacing the 8 way with a 4 way that only has 7db loss per way. You could also replace the passive splitter with an amplified splitter and have no loss and possibly a gain in signal strength. You do have to be careful not to overdrive the Tablo’s tuner tho.

Sometimes it just takes trial and error to get the best possible signal to all devices.