I’ve been a Tablo owner for not quite 24 hours and it seems that guide data for most of my local channels is missing (I’ve put in a support ticket, hopefully that can get resolved). Last night I wanted to record Shark Tank and our ABC affiliate is one of the channels that is missing data, so I looked the show up and found that it started at 9pm locally so I set a manual recording from 9:00pm - 10:05pm on our ABC channel. Everything went okay except that it cut off at just under 55 minutes, so it only recorded from 9:00 - 9:55 (even though the title of the program clearly indicates 9:00 - 10:05). Is this normal? Did I make a mistake in scheduling the manual recording?
This was one of the proof-of-concept tests for my wife that we can make life work without cable but when we had to switch back to the cable DVR to watch the last 5 minutes of the show, I got one of those looks that made it clear she wasn’t quite confident that this was going to work out.
1. I don't believe so unless it was a sudden loss, quality was impressive to me, no choppiness or artifacts that I detected. I was looking for this, trying to figure out if things would be degraded. Using HDHomeRun in the past, ABC/CBS/NBC have always been very solid, FOX is a network where the signal quality would occasionally be an issue.
2. Possibly, is there a way to confirm that (logs or anything)? My hard drive is listed as WD Ext HDD 1021 2002 (2000 GB). One reason why I think this might not be the case is that I started watching the recording in the middle of the program, probably 9:30-ish. If the hard drive disconnected during that time, my assumption is that I would've seen some effect during playback.
3. One of the first things it did when I started it up was update to the new firmware, so I believe so (listed as 2.1.20). Again, though, I was watching the recording during the time in question. If it rebooted, my assumption is that my watching the recording would have been interrupted as well.
I set up the recordings via a desktop web browser (Chrome / Mac) about 45 minutes before the show started, I was playing back via a Roku 3. I also confirmed that playback on the web and iPhone is the same 55 minutes. The Tablo and the Roku are using ethernet, not wireless, if that matters. Looking at some of the scheduled recordings I set up, they all seem to be doing okay. 30 minute programs seem to be about 35 min in length and hour long programs seem to have a similar amount of padding at the end.
Sounds like you’re doing everything right. But I’ve seen a lot of issues in the forums about people with those WD 2 TB drives. Is it one of those Elements drive? If so, please update the firmware on the HDD.
Just some threads about those WD 2 TB drives and how a firmware update was needed, and/or disabling a sleep timer on the drive was also needed:
What, there is a way to manually record something? Been using Tablo about three months, and never knew that was possible. I just looked at all the controls I can see and don’t see how to even do that.
In the Scheduled section, there’s a + next to the search icon in the upper right, clicking that + allows you to specify channel/time for manual recordings.
I haven’t yet updated firmware of the hard drive or anything, but I did do a manual recording for Saturday Night Live for the same hour and 5 minutes and it seemed to work okay (1:05:15 video length).