New Tablo - Issue on one channel

Hello community!

I recently got a Tablo to augment my cord cutting experience. For some background, I live with my fiance and we don’t watch a ton of live TV. Primarily we’ll watch good morning america in the morning, the news at night, and NFL games. Everything else we watch is generally on demand. We got a Tablo to have a DVR experience that is easily portable to other devices, and to get our live TV channels on the Roku so we don’t have to change inputs anymore. So far the experience is great on all the network channels with the exception of abc. Unfortunately, that’s the channel that has two of the three things we watch on it…

I have the Tablo set at 720p to try and smooth out the issue. At 1080p, the issue is much more prevalent. On abc, the picture is jittery at times and the stream will often say loading and replay the last 5 seconds. When we had the antenna direct to the tv, this channel was also the only one with artifacts in the picture every once in a while though not this bad. Direct in had artifacts but not regularly (once every 15 minutes?).

My thought is because the channel doesn’t always come in 100% clear, its slowing down the Tablo. The issue when at 720p happens only once a minute or so (jittey, artifacts, motion jutter) and the loading is only once every few minutes though I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts? I live in the middle of NYC, third floor, with the antenna in the window. All the network channels show that they are full strength. I may go pick up another antenna to test but aside from that, not sure why it would only be this channel. I really want to up to 1080p for the quality but so far, the issue on the fiance’s favorite channel may not help my case to keep the Tablo…

Thanks for any help!

Since it was a problem when connected directly to the TV, I have a strong feeling that the problem is the antenna. What is your zip code? have you been to www.tvfool.com? What antenna do you have? (indoor or outdoor) and model.

Like I said, I had problems until I discovered that a display channel I thought was UHF turned out to be broadcast on VHF. The antenna I was using, the Mohu Leaf 50 amplified is not designed for VHF.

Do you have the 2 tuner or 4 tuner model of the Tablo? The Tablo has an internal antenna splitter, so either way the signal going to the Tablo is being split 2 or 4 times, making any already weak station even weaker. When you scan the channels, what color and how many circles are there?

Using Google, I see that New York City ABC station is WABC-7 and most likely is broadcast on a VHF channel, so you need an antenna that says it is VHF and UHF. I suggest this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BN5Z2WM?keywords=fl150%20antenna&qid=1444211739&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1 and is the one I have. It gave me what I was missing. Position is important. It had problems in the living room window so I moved it to the bedroom window. It has worked flawless.

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I’m having a similar issue with one station in my area. After some troubleshooting and a discussion with the TV stations chief engineer it appears my antenna amplifier may be boosting the signal too much for their station. I can’t just unplug the amplifier as I lose signal on three other stations without it. The engineer recommended I install a -3db attenuator on the antenna cable to knock down the signal strength slightly but still retain enough boost for the other channels.

Here’s my report from TVFool/ Guess the antenna avoids over amplifying my channels.

Thanks for the replies! @beastman I’m currently using the lowest version of the antenna you linked to ($29 flatwave). I repositioned the antenna, reset everything, and now ABC is working better. Not sure what would have changed that (likely the positioning of the antenna) though if it comes back, I will likely try the -3db attenuator that @rsieben mentioned. Appreciate the help!

Is the version you using a Winegard, just not amplified? It is designed for VHF and UHF whole the Mohu will do VHF 7 it didn’t do 13.

The attenuator worked for my situation. The station that I determined was being overdriven by the antenna’s amplifier is now solid and the weaker stations still come in strong.