I have a Mohu Leaf and can get everything except GetTV and ESCAPE!, which are both sub channels on the same station. I ordered an omnidirectional antenna and hoping it gets it. I do get GetTV and ESCAPE! in the bedroom with just old school rabbit ears and a digital converter box. But I do not get channel 17 because of the different direction. I get the main channels, and am on the edge of 17 so it needs to be aimed better. I’ll see what happens when the new antenna arrives.
I would really like to try to at least get ION. I don’t care about HSN or the QVC sub channels. I’m going to try to play around with antenna placement tonight and see if I can somehow get it. The Mohu Sky 60 is available locally, so I guess I could easily give it a try if need be. If you don’t mind me asking, which omnidirectional antenna did you order?
LAVA 468 Digital Ready Indoor HDTV UHF/VHF/FM
Antenna with 20% More Gain
http://antennadeals.com/HD468.html and also available at Amazon
It’s not omnidirectional but I’ll see what happens.
If I recall correctly, the other stations were close to you nullpoynter and Ion was 60 miles away. I don’t know if Ion is UHF or VHF in you area. It’s easy to get UHF antenna gain. If you’re up to installing an attic or roof mount antenna, skip all the steps in between and get the “right” antenna that should pick up that long distance station ASAP. Off axis stations 10 miles away will probably still get picked up. Then try ddd671’s “trick” if necessary.
I “quickly” found this link to “find” a long range antenna. http://www.antennacraft.net/Finder/Finder.php?colorid=6&rf-channel=rfc0769&location=outdoor&price=999999.00&submit=Search
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Based on your antennaweb results I think you’d be in a really good position for something like the mohu sky 60 installed either in your attic or on the roof. It looks like ion is almost exactly 180 degrees off from the main stations you want so if you position the sky so that the flat sides are facing southeast and northwest you should be able to get ion from the one side of the antenna and the rest from the opposite side.
Which why should my Mohu Leaf 50 be set up to receive everything? My ip code is 78758. I also noticed that tvfool hasn’t updated the database to reflect the change in KBVO. I’m waiting for the additional changes coming on June 1 before mentioning it to them.
Okay, I’ve made some progress. I just hookup up my new Tablo tonight, got it fully configured, and updated to the latest firmware. So far so good. I also relocated my Mohu Leaf 50 to my home office instead of the home theater room. I’m now picking up ION, but the signal is weak (Tablo shows yellow dot). Sometimes the channel will get some blocking, but when it’s working the quality is really good. All the other channels come in great and look great. I’m very happy with the quality of the viewing experience thus far. The slight delay on live TV viewing doesn’t annoy me in the slightest. I’m used to the slow channel change after having used previous HTPC products and media extenders. I’m still going to play around with the antenna some to see if I can improve reception on ION. I may still end up ordering the Amazonbasics version of the Mohu Sky 60 and see if mounting in my attic improves the reception for ION. I also still need to try the new Roku app in development. Overall, I’m very happy so far. I still welcome any antenna suggestions, especially what I should do to improve my ION reception. If there is something better than the Mohu Sky 60 (or Amazonbasics version) that I should be trying please let me know. I’ll report back later on any further progress. Thanks again for all the suggestions and help thus far 
Your AntennaWeb report has ION-tv at 107 degrees, ABC, CBS, and NBC at 137 degrees (and less than 10 miles), and your best PBS and FOX station is at 150. TVfool.com shows WUPX-DT for Lexington, KY as a Noise Margin (NM) of 23.7 dB. In my experience you need an NM of >30 dB to get a consistent picture. Even at the margin of 30, you should expect occasional dropouts which will cause buffering in the Tablo stream.
My best guess is that you could probably get WUPX-DT with a roof or tower mounted Yagi (with a gain of +25 or more). You might get it with a big Gray-Hoverman or DB8 (Bowtie) mounted in an attic with careful pointing. The good news is that you will probably pick up the ABC, CBS, NBC with just about anything, including a 2 inch piece of wire hanging out of the F connector on the Tablo. An attic mount GH or bowtie pointed at ION might (!!) get you FOX and PBS, but I wouldn’t bet much money on it.
At the end of the day, it is your call to decide whether the effort to get ION-tv is worth it. For me, I would probably not even try and buy a HULU+ subscription to get most of the shows that ION provides.
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I mentioned in an earlier reply the Gray-Hoverman antenna design. I really like this one as it works very well, and can be a DIY home project for very little money. I have a friend who made his with copper foil tape on a piece of construction styrofoam (the kind used to insulate walls). I think he had $15 in his antenna.
Here is a link on how to build the GH antenna. If you are looking for an attic mounted antenna this might be a good way to go. At least it won’t cost you much. I like the LNA-200 pre-amps for this kind of thing.
I built this coat hanger antenna and use it along with the winegard lna-200 boost preamp. It gets me slightly better reception than the amazonbasics version of the mohu sky 60.
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All of you guys are awesome! Thanks for all of the suggestions and DIY ideas. You guys really know your antennas!!! Seriously, the Tablo community has been the most awesome and helpful community I’ve experienced in awhile. It’s been quite refreshing. Thanks again…
Now on to my update. So, after fiddling with the Mohu Leaf 50 I think I’m good with all channels including ION. ION has three yellow dots vs 5 green dots of signal for the other channels. The blocking is very rare. I’ve had ION playing in the background all evening hardly without any issues at all. I even scheduled a recording for ION and it worked great. As of right now I think I’m just going to stick with the Leaf 50. If I do need to upgrade in the future I’ll definitely consider the DIY projects you all mentioned for attic antennas. I’m a tech geek so I love building these type of things. In regards to using the Tablo, I’ve tried Tablo on my Chromebook and my first generation Roku 2 and both work great. The new Roku app seems a little slower on my Roku, but it’s still acceptable since it’s on a secondary TV. I’ve ordered a new 2015 Roku 3 for my main setup, so there shouldn’t be any worries there. I must say the setup of the Tablo was a breeze. It’s probably one of the easiest DVR setups I’ve ever setup. Kudos to the Tablo crew!
Now here are some questions and things I would like to see added to Tablo :
1.) I would like to be able to manually add and specify a padding to a scheduled recording. For example, have the recording start 1 minute before the show start time and end 1 minute after the show end time.
2.) Can you not play live TV from an Android phone? I have a Nexus 4 and when I connect to the Tablo I only see the options to record a show or watch a recording.
3.) I would like to see the sync process on the Android app perform faster. It seems a little slow at the moment.
4.) Is there a Tablo supported method of archiving a recording off the hard drive to another computer. It would be nice if I could download a recording from the web interface.
Tablo is definitely a keeper and I’ll be calling Time Warner tomorrow to cancel my TV services. Keep those updates rolling @TabloTV. You have another happy customer.
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In regards to your #2 have you tried clicking on the channel # on the far left while in the live TV Guide? Simply clicking a show won’t tune that channel on Android devices.
Well duh! I didn’t even think of touching the channel number. I kept on just touching the current time slot. Just tried it on my Nexus 4 and it worked. Thanks!
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With regards to your questions:
- This has been requested a few times already. It is on their ‘to-do’ list, not sure what the priority is.
- You’ve solved that.
- Another commonly requested optimization. However, you will notice that the initial sync is the longest. If you run the Android app every couple of days, the sync is pretty quick.
- This is a very popular request, Tablo has said they will make this happen, but again no timeline. For now, Jestep’s Tablo Exporter works great. Search the forums for it. Actually here is:
Purchased a refurbished 4 tuner on Amazon for $220x. Received it yesterday and tried it out for a few hours, without the HD though. A few observations:
- Tried hooking up tablo via ethernet and couldn’t find the device for some reason. So I hooked it up via wireless.
- I have Roku 2 XS (a few years old) and Tablo preview channel is somewhat slow when it comes to navigation and guide population. I’m wondering if it will be faster on Roku 3.
- There’s quite a bit of buffering in the first 30-45 seconds of navigating and watching a channel. Amazon Prime on same roku starts out a lot faster.
- There is less buffering watching Live TV on the mobile devices, such as iPad and Android phone. In fact, I’d say that the speed and quality of video on the mobile devices is on par if not a bit better than Dishnetwork with sling.
- As people already mentioned, you can’t really do channel surfing on Roku, so I’m going to need to adjust to that. Would be nice if arrows up and down on Roku remote worked channel changing buttons.
- I’ll connect the HD this evening and test our recording functionality. Are there any performance advantages of 7200 RPM drives vs 5400 RPM drives on tablo?
- Tablo needs to add full functionality to the 30 day trial, as I’m currently unable to test out remote viewing without paying for subscription.
This is a great forum and I’ve learned a lot about Tablo before I purchased it!
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You don’t need to sign up for a subscription to test out Tablo Connect. Just enable it in settings while you’re on your home network and you’re good to go.
It was grayed out for me, with a message that feature only available with subscription, but I’ll try it again tonight.
Did you purchase your unit through Amazon Warehouse deals? If so, you may not have a trial enabled because your unit has already checked in more than 30 days ago.
Check out your settings screen. It should say you are in trial and how many days you have left. If not, pop a note to Tablo Support with your MAC address and we’ll get that fixed up.
I did purchase it through the Amazon Warehouse deal. I’m able to get the guide, but other features are disabled. I’ll send the MAC to Tablo Support tonight.
That’s definitely the issue. You should have everything enabled on trial. However, since Amazon Warehouse units are returns which are not refurbished by us at HQ, they are not ‘reset’ for the guide trial nor checked & tested like our refurb units are.
We’ll get you patched up!