Has anyone dealt with getting occasional pixelation during live and recorded broadcasts? How have you resolved this issue? Antenna signal is extremely strong. Thanks!
If your signal is “too” strong, you may be overloading the front end of the tuner. Do you have an amplifier and are you close to the transmitter? You may need to remove the amp or even use an attenuator to knock it down. Another cause of pixelization could be a hard drive going bad. Also, if something gets between your antenna and transmitter, particularly for antennas that are installed fairly low, a large vehicle passing between the, could cause a momentary disruption.
I have occasional pixelation when watching recorded content from my local PBS station. Thinking it may have been a reception issue I added a small distribution amplifier (because the Tablo splits the signal). This helped, but I still get pixelation at times. It may be related to the PBS station itself as other stations don’t have this issue. I don’t use the Tablo to watch live TV so I can’t comment on that.
Also, never a problem when watching this station on the TV directly.
Would a hard drive cause issues with live TV?
It is possible, but unlikely. An easy way to test this is turn off the Tablo, unplug the HDD, power it back on and watch live TV.
If you still have pixelation then it is likely an OTA signal issue.
When I was having pixelation problems this is what I was referred to https://support.tablotv.com/hc/en-us/articles/208223573-Troubleshooting-your-Tablo
Not sure exactly which step solved my problem since I tried all of them but, I haven’t had the problem since!
Hi,
I had this problem recently caused by the trees (never had this problem during winder/spring) and resolved it with an AMP, check this post, maybe it can help.
STILL having an issue with pixelation. I have called Tablo support and they only recommended adjusting my antenna, which I did. All channels are 5 green bars and I do not get any pixelation when just hooked up to the antenna itself. I am beginning to think it is my hard drive - anyone else have any thoughts?! So frustrated!
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Have you run a new channel scan and committed that channel scan after adjusting your antenna?
Have you tried disconnecting your drive and playing a channel live? Do you get the same pixelation?
Yes to the channel scan, multiple times. I will try to disconnect the drive and watch the table to see if it makes a difference.
Hi,
I am having similar issues. I am convinced it’s the fact that Tablo is a dual tuner (in my case). When I watch TV directly from my TV I do not have these problems. Splitting the signal to two tuners weakens it.
Random pixelation is a fact of life, and be caused by passing clouds, trees blowing in the wind, airplanes, etc. seeing pixelation in recordings does not give an opportunity to verify conditions when the disturbance occurred.
If possible try looking for pixelation in real time and switch between the Tablo and a TV using its internal tuner to see if pixelation occurs under both conditions.
If the TV has a signal strength or signal quality indicator, try to get a reading when the Tablo pixelates to see how close the signal to the Tablo is to the “digital cliff” where a signal loss of 3 or 6 db in the splitter or internal to the Tablo is enough to cause problems.
Okay, did some investigating last night.
- I removed the hard drive from the system and did a reset. Still got pixelation while watching live TV over the Tablo.
- Did a channel scan and re-locked the channels.Still got pixelation over the Tablo.
- Watched TV directly from the antenna feed. No pixelation at all.
I am now convinced it has nothing to do with the hard drive or the antenna but in fact the Tablo box itself (although Tablo does not want to admit that). I do not believe it is drifting clouds or such as I am in the immediate NYC suburbs with a very healthy TV signal.
Any other suggestions? Beginning my search for an alternative cord cutting solution.
Tablo Support, any help is appreciated!!!
Did you try adding an amp as suggested?
I will try it but if you look at the thread someone suggested that the issue was because the signal was too strong. Can you say confusing?!
@Andrew1 I would recommend touching base with our support team directly: www.tablotv.com/ask-tablo
Please make note of the channels that you are experiencing pixelation on.
The team will be able to tell you if the signals are approaching the digital cliff (not strong enough) or overloading the tuner (too strong).
Keep in mind that you cannot compare what you see via a single tuner (on your TV) to what you see on a 2/4 tuner device (your Tablo) as the signal is being divided between each tuner.
That is exactly what he is comparing, it’s appropriate, and to be expected.
I don’t recall seeing any documentation stating the signal would be weaker in the Tablo, because it’s been split amongst multiple tuners… before I bought it.
You either need to have upfront and accurate marketing, and product descriptions, or deal with customer dissatisfaction after they find out the product doesn’t work the way they expected.
Again I have to agree with you Andrew, it’s the split tablo tuner. This is what tablo support told me. I tried a number of amps, 2 did nothing and 1 the wineguard lna 200 over amplified my strong channels making them completely drop out. At this point I’m not sure what to do. Might get Hulu for abc, nbc and fox and use tablo to record CBS which works well. If I want to watch live TV I will just plug the coax cable directly into the TV so the picture is clear on ABC and Fox 5.
To be clear, Tablo does have an in-line amplifier that helps mitigate signal loss. However if the signal is on the edge of the digital cliff, you can experience breakups or signal loss.
There’s more info about this here: