NEW - Tablo Firmware Release 2.2.22

Any chance 5.1 audio will come to the 4 tuner tablo as well?

This firmware applies to 2 tuner and 4 tuner Tablos.

Pretty sure you and @Radojevic are just trying to be funny, but I’ll explain it. When you have 5.1 enabled on the Tablo, you can play 5.1 on a 5.1 capable system.

But if you’re playing it on your phone it doesn’t transcode it to stereo for playback. So your phone needs the proper codec to transocde the 5.1 audio to stereo on it’s own. Does it play it in 5.1? Obviously not. But 5.1 isn’t for playing on the phone or a tablet or your TV without speakers.

Since the Tablo can’t automatically do both, you need to chose one or the other. I’d rather be able to play in 5.1 on my TV/system and use a hack on my phone to get stereo sound vs. play stereo on my system and use the Tablo app on my phone (to still get stereo).
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@Zippy I spend about that much on my sub (I like to feel my bass, not just hear it, during a movie – broadcast TV never goes that low, it’s filtered). So yeah, my whole system costs more than your estimate. And it’s setup pretty well, not ideal, but I don’t have the space for an ideal placement. Newer (you know, in the last 15 years and probably even before that) receivers compensate for varying offsets and less than ideal placement. This isn’t the 1970s anymore.
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And you don’t need to listen to it loud for the sound quality to be good. Same with a sports car, you don’t need to drive it above the speed limit for it to be fast [to the speed limit]. Just because you CAN, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. I prefer to have my hearing intact.

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I did grow up in the 1960’s. So I do remember custom made speaker systems made for those looking for the perfect sound. And they cost around $3000 in 1969 dollars.

And even those output such perfect sound that even slight sound increases in the audio stream penetrated further then desired.

I would be hard pressed to spend the money to maintain my ā€œ66ā€ mustang if I couldn’t drive it, at least a few times, above the speed limit.

I’ve been using Tablo for about three years and am on the beta team. Firmware updates have improved Tablo’s quality and experience. I’m wondering if anyone else experiences strange activity when a new firmware version is released? My Tablo goes haywire and requires a power-cycle whenever a new firmware comes in and I don’t load it up right away. I get frequent disconnects and ā€œno tablo foundā€ until I reboot/power cycle or load the firmware. Not a show-stopper (no pun intended), but does bother me when I miss recording segments of shows due to the wonky behavior. Reply to this if you experience something similar with firmware releases.

Thank you for adding 5.1 audio support. It has been a really long wait and it definitely sounds better on my home theater system.

Unfortunately, my excitement has been short lived as now I cannot seem to find a way to get audio to play back on my PC in any browser or even in the Tablo app from the Microsoft store. This is a really weird trade-off, and I’m tempted to just go back to the overcompressed scratchy stereo option for compatibility reasons.

Is there any chance that Tablo will update its Windows app to support AC3 audio? That might resolve the issue.

Another thought is that in the Chrome browser on my Android phone, going to my.tablotv.com shows a setting to launch an external video player, which when selected lets me pick VLC to playback the stream and both hear and see it. Would it be possible for Tablo to update the behavior on the PC so that Chrome allows a similar option to launch VLC or other media player that supports 5.1 audio?

Is there any other workaround for PC support with the Tablo surround sound setting turned on? I really don’t want to go back to the inferior sounding stereo only option.

On one of the links in the OP it specifically says that the Chrome Browser via my.tablotv.com is not supported ā€œat this timeā€.

So maybe in 4 more years? :wink:

I will say that during the beta I tried many different options for the PC, and nothing worked. The Tablo folks are going to try to make it work in the future, but this is one of the main reasons why surround sound hasn’t been available before now.

The main issue appears to be that Dolby Digital support has to be licensed, and Chrome/Firefox aren’t going to pay licensing fees.

Got mine today. Upgraded from .21 to .22. I’m on the beta team for both Tablo device, Roku, AppleTV, AndroidTV. To be honest I use AppleTV the most since it’s the best with DTVN but do try them all during betas.

Microsoft Edge browser has audio. Not sure if it’s specific to Windows 10 or will work with others (FF, Chrome, Opera, etc. do not work)

I did read that, but unfortunately the Tablo client will not connect with Edge (goodness knows I tried for a while). If the Tablo folks could change their code so that Edge works, it is a possible workaround.

@snowcat I’m not talking about what I read, I’m telling you what I see/hear :stuck_out_tongue:

And live stream with ā€œ5.1ā€ checked, but obviously playing back in stereo [firefox on the left, edge on the right – was too lazy to edit the screen capture – and each time I hit alt+print screen it exited playback]

Interesting. I cannot connect to either of my Tablos via Edge, only through Chrome and Firefox. It sees them fine, but just won’t connect.

Me neither.

Maybe it’s a similar problem to what I had with Chrome and 2.2.22.

My older version of Chrome wouldn’t connect until I deleted the tablo unit and all the app data and restarted Chrome.

Footnote - the update changed my ā€œRemote Streaming Qualityā€ setting to 1Mbps, I had it set to 500kbps (not worried about quality, would even like a lower setting. Mostly use it to "hear’ a newscast when not at home, and I’m often in a poor cellular area with painfully slow 3G when I use it.)

Might be worth checking yours, especially if you have a higher setting and it lowers it and you care about video quality.

I’ve never used Edge before Tablo pushed out 5.1. I generally don’t watch Tablo on my computer, but was curious to see if there’s a workaround. I have no idea which version I’m on, but my Windows 10 is up to date.

Almost 70% of you should now have access to the 2.2.22 firmware. The rollout should be complete by Friday.

Received 2.2.22 yesterday. Running the Roku app for Tablo. However, when I go to Tablo Settings on both the Roku App and on my Android phone, I do not see any mention about audio 5.1 as depicted on the screen shot for settings. Are my eyes getting that bad at my old age?? Thanks.

Roku might not have updated yet, try doing it from the Chrome browser (the check box)