I cannot watch any television tonight. Every channel shows weak signal. I can hook my antenna directly to the TV and everything comes in perfectly. So I can watch TV but cannot record several shows. Very, very annoyed.
Have you tried changing the amp setting on your Tablo and rescanning?
If you mean the amplification, that’s been turned off since I purchased the device 16 months ago
Well… try turning it on and try a rescan.
Doesn’t work with it on because my rooftop antenna is amplified. Can’t do a rescan…if will find zero channels. Actually, I could try it and just not save. Next commercial break, I’ll try that. Right now my antenna is attached to the TV so I can watch. Thank you.
The problem persists
Have you checked your antenna to see if a branch fell on it, or some similar problem? High winds recently that could have turned your antenna?
With an outdoor antenna, that’s a lot of cable line… maybe something happened somewhere outside or in…
Actually, I believe the recent high winds did in fact move the antenna. However, that doesn’t explain reception being okay when connected directly to the TV. It fixed itself late last night. It will remain a mystery.
The Tablo DVR has more than one tuner so the signal that gets to the tuners is less powerful than what is received by your one tuner TV.
The TV receiver has a huge advantage over the Tablo receiver.
The TV tuner can have more stages of intermediate frequency, (IF) amplification with each stage having it’s own band pass filters.
The extra stages of IF amplification reduces the receiver bandwidth and improves the rejection of adjacent channels.
Most important is the automatic gain control, agc. The agc automatically adjusts the signal level going to the detector to keep it within a certain range. A super large input from the antenna will be attenuated while a weak signal will be amplified.
Bottom line, the TV tuner will almost always outperform the Tablo tuner.
Almost. If I aim my antenna on a sweet spot almost south of here, the Tablo tuner grabs all the southern stations and most of the ones to my north (which are much closer). The opposite will obviously not work. However, on my Toshiba tv, I get only one local (northerly station) and most of the southern stations. All others must be manually added with the antenna aimed at the respective tower locations. I bought a Toshiba for strictly that reason (the ability to manually add channels and not lose previously saved channels), years before I had a Tablo. This indicates, that in my case in particular, the Tablo tuner outperforms the television’s tuner.
Just for more details, the southern channels are mostly in the Baltimore area, 44 miles from me. The majority of “local” channels are 26-30 miles away in nearly the opposite direction. I pull in approx 50 channels. My roof antenna is a channel master from the mid 1980s, with an amp and rotor for antenna directional changes.
Kolchak65 I’m also in the Baltimore area more in the county side. The roof antenna that you use is adequate for your needs. I use the antenna that Tablo provided with my 4 tuner unit I pick up at least 70 channels if in the right spot. Altogether I say 143 channels with the Internet channels put in. Hopefully there’s a way for you to fix the problem in the future.
My problem only lasted a few hours and fixed itself. And yes, I have a larger number of channels on my Tablo because of the fast channels provided (cheesy as they are). In fact, I can get additional channels on my tv by moving my antenna west. I can do that because the Toshiba brand TVs allow one to save the channels locked in and then reposition the antenna and manually input more digital channels. It requires a little research but is quite handy. I would rank my roof antenna as superb, having given decades of service and picking up many channels, none of which are near me. I still believe the issue from Thursday night were Tablo issues, although I could be wrong. I just know I’m back in service and content until the next snafu shows up.
It can be a little tricky, and can require a special box, but you can sometimes use two antennas pointed in different directions at the same time. Antenna Man did a video on it not long ago. I will have to look for it again, because I am considering doing it.
I know that can be done, but it would be of no benefit to me. Definitely worth considering for some others, though.
I have rabbit ears indoors and the tablo antenna. The tv can get around 30 and tablo only one channel. Not sure why I spent 130 on this thing. Am I supposed to install a large roof mounted antenna just to see if the tablo might pick up more channels?
So use the rabbit ears on the Tablo. Flat antennas are pretty much garbage.
With the rabbit ears the Tablo gets one channel while the TV gets 30.