After much anticipation and excitement I finally cut the cord once I discovered Tablo. Since receiving it late last week, however, my excitement has turned to frustration and thoughts of returning the device. This is all due to the inability to sync a few devices and the unacceptably long time it takes to sync to when it does work. This Syncing issue has really undermined my confidence in both the hardware and service.
I’m hoping someone here can bring back my confidence and help resolve these issues.
PROBLEMS:
Syncing prevents use on iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 5. It just hangs
at various points in progress bar.
Syncing takes an unacceptably long period of time for subsequent
connections on those devices that managed to complete the initial
(multi hour/day) Syncing process.
Picture quality is obviously different/degraded when viewing OTA TV
through the Tablo. Colors are more saturated, stuttering in
playback, and slight pixelation. This has been tested at top three
resolution settings (1080-720) with same results.
ATTEMPTED FIXES:
Modem, router, and Tablo all powercycled (rebooted)
All devices on network rebooted and cleared from router access table
Web apps deleted and reinstalled on both iPhones
Switched between top 3 resolutions on Tablo
Content scenarios - zero scheduled or recorded shows. Five scheduled shows, 4 recorded.
CURRENT SETUP:
Tablo - 4 tuner with 2.28 firmware, ethernet connected to router
USB HDD - WD Elements 2TB, USB 2.0 & 3.0 compatible
Router - Linksys E3000, 2.4 and 5Ghz frequencies, 3.5ms local ping
Cable ISP - 50+mbps down/5mbps up
iPad Air, iPad 3rd Gen, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5 - all running latest iOS (9.2.1)
Two Apple TVs - 1 wired to router, (gen 3), 1 wifi (gen2), all running latest firmware
OTA feed split to Tablo and directly to 50" Samsung (UN55H7150AFXZA)
The initial sync can take a few minutes, I have seen it take 3-4 minutes on my iPhone 6 running iOS 9.2.1. But the subsequent sync takes 1-2 minutes depending on how many recordings have completed since I last sync’d.
You named all Apple devices, have you tried the my.tablotv.com website in the Chrome browser on a computer? See how long this takes to sync.
It is possible you’re having weird hard drive issues, can you please update the firmware on the WD Elements drive? There are known firmware versions on the WD Elements 2 TB drives that have caused known issues in the past.
Initial sync on all devices that eventually connected (including 2 laptops) took between 45minutes and over 12 hours. And this was with zero recordings, because I was just syncing devices.
Very odd - I have never had a complete sync on a new device take over 10 minutes. This is even with multiple recordings.
How many OTA channels do you have selected? I have 13 channels in my guide as I only have the HD channels selected (1080i and 720p) . People have had slow sync times when they get up to 40-50 channels.
When using the WD Firmware Update Utility, even if it reports your USB HDD is up to date, force the current version of the firmware to be installed. This “re-install” of the firmware has also fixed issues for people with the WD Elements drive.
Open a Support Ticket with Tablo Support, have them remote into your Tablo to check the logs. They may be able to shed more info on why this is happening for you. This is not the typical way the Tablo functions for many.
With regards to “degradation”… this has to be true. For efficiency in transport the mpeg2-ts streams out as h264. Tablo is trying to make something flexible that can stream to anywhere… trying to push mpeg2-ts out to every device (including mobile) wouldn’t work.
YMMV
Not sure if there will ever be a “lossless” way to effectively do this in a manner that is very portable to the majority of end devices (may take a new common denominator codec standard).