One more video, yeah, I think it might be related to commskip after all.
I’ve been recording this series, never watched an episode. Episode 16, from March, pre comskip, has 5.1 works fine. Episode 23, with comskip, has 5.1 craps out at 5 minutes and at 30 minutes (every 5 minutes, I just randomly choose these two times)
Sorry … Nomenclature problem… When I say “internal player” I mean “ota2go’s built in player”… Vs “external player” by which I mean any player outside of ota2go that ota2go launches. By “Tablo player” I mean the one that the native official Tablo app uses. My bad!
Hmmm… Interesting… So VLC dies on 5 min boundaries when comskip is on, but not when it is off. And the ota2go player can play both without death… Correct?
Correct
Late breaking… Mine does it too with comskip recordings on VLC. Both the internal ota2go player and mxplayer are fine and play through.
I understood all recordings to be identical, with comskip recordings having extra metadata telling apps what parts to skip. Clearly something funky happening in the streaming that VLC doesn’t like. Some kind of timestamp discontinuity perhaps? I know external players aren’t exactly an officially supported thing, but @TabloEngineering might be interested to know that the watch URLs returned by the API for comskipped recordings cause VLC to die at 5-min intervals. MXPlayer and Google ExoPlayer2 are fine.
Thanks Max for the detailed investigation! The mystery remains!
One last data point, then I’ll done.
Behavior is fully replicable on my wife’s galaxy S9 (VLC stops at 5 minutes, internal ota player does not, internal ota player has sound)
Hah, no worries, just glad I’m not alone!
The seek behaviour inside VLC for these is all wonky too. You can seek past 5 mins, but the thumb dot doesn’t land where you drag it and kind of jumps all over unpredictably. Some kind of internal timestamp issues on the ts packets I guess?
Just as another data point, I see the exact same results testing this scenario with VLC. I was able to seek to 4:50 and let it play and it stopped @ 5:01.
I’m in the same situation as @sctaylor with my phone. Pixel 3a doesn’t have 5.1 native support.
@TabloEngineering and our video experts checked this out. They’ve tracked it down to a VLC error that’s asking for a start offset larger than the segment size (error 416).
Unfortunately, you’ll have to use a different video player until VLC can patch the problem
Thanks! I just found VLC logging and determined the same (in between work meetings lol!) – I reverted to requesting the v3 HLS streams as a test, and VLC seems to be happier with those. I will likely patch my app tonight to maintain proper operation for users and patch it back when VLC sorts itself out.
Thanks @TabloTV for the quick confirmation!
Fyi, update to work around VLC issue should be live now. Thx again for all the help!
Gah!!! Broke it. Some users will be unable to connect. Google upped their min API requirement.
My apologies… Will fix ASAP!
Thx!
Fyi, the issue should now be fixed in 1.9.07 in the Play store. Time for me to buy a more recent phone for testing 
Hi, I have been using ota2go with an external player for many moons without any problems. I record 5.1 audio and it had been working so good for so long that I am not even sure which external player I have used (Xplayer IIRC). A couple of weeks or so ago it just stopped playing any video (blue spinning wheel). I suspect that something had been updated. I also had MX-Player, VLC, and a few other players installed. I am now trying to select a different external player and cannot find a way to do this. I uninstalled and re-installed ota2go as well as the external players but I just cannot convince ota2go to provide me with the option to select a specific external player. Please note I am not referring to the two switches below EXTERNAL PLAYER under Options. I remember when getting it going back when I could try different players but I don’t have the same luck now. Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi Spyder - yes, I’m sorry your player of choice stopped working, there was an update indeed. I had to change the media type in the share function as VLC had changed and had stopped working. As the open source heavyweight, I chose to change to keep it (and MX Player) working.
The ability to pick a new default is an Android function… the os remembers your choice, not the app. At some point you likely clicked “always” instead of “just once”. If u go to Settings… Apps… XPlayer… Set as Default… Clear Defaults" (or similar, depending on your Android version) it should ask you next time you try to play a download.
Let me know if that doesn’t work… I can try digging further.
Cheers!
Appreciated! It is back up and running. Looks like somehow the default was set to ES File Explorer’s video player. Once that was cleared the options were presented. Thanks again for the advice. Great App!
I use OTA2GO on my 2019 model of Amazon Fire HD Tablet . It works without Google to installed, but to get the registered version to work, you must add Google. Watched Spiderwoman series and other shows on the tablet. Love the app and how simple to use.
Fyi I mentioned it on another Facebook group. Here is his response:
Bill Eastman
Just tried ota2GO. Answer to my TABLO recording questions. Thanks
I’ve been using OTA2GO for some time. It’s a great little app that allows me to download Tablo recordings to my Android tablet and take with me when I go away on vacation.
The only thing that would make it even better would be the ability to connect to Tablo when you’re away from home. It didn’t do this the last time I traveled (pre Covid) so maybe it does it now.