Oh, we do understand the technical reason why it’s happening.
My point is we weren’t presented with this information before we purchased our units.
My ABC station might constitute being on the"digital cliff" because it shows about 72% on my TV signal meter, but Fox 5 is never below 92% and it pixilated just as bad as ABC. 5 shows all green circles on the tablo channels scan.
For those serious to determine the reserve signal strength in their tv signal before the “digital cliff” kicks in I suggest purchasing online attenuators that can be stacked to determine the reserve signal strength without guesswork. In some cases I have seen attenuation go to 20 db or more before signal loss, indication a high reserve of signal strength. Consider also some pixilation can be caused by multi-path distortion which can occur at times even with relatively strong signals.
Example source of attenuators . You can also purchase in defined db values like 3,6,8,10,20, etc to reduce stacking units with strong signals.
Isn’t this slightly excessive? If you have pixelation in bad weather, etc then you know the reserve is shit, and you need a bigger antenna or a pre-amp or amp.
Tablo Support, you said the following: “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.”
The marketing on your website is in complete contrast to that statement - here is what it says:
Beautiful HD Picture Quality - Cable operators compress their TV signals to conserve bandwidth in order to deliver multiple services (phone, TV and internet) over a single connection. Over-the-Air (OTA) HDTV signals received through antennas are uncompressed, delivering an incredibly crisp HD picture, far superior to what you’ve been getting from your cable provider.
Let me repeat - INCREDIBLY CRISP HD PICTURE
Which is it - it can’t be both. As a customer of your product my expectation is that you would/could provide me with a TV picture that is comparable to what I would see on my television hooked up to my OTA antenna. The suggestion that I just need to accept or understand that the signal Tablo puts out is any less is completely absurd.
Either you stand behind your product as it is marketed or you don’t. If it is the later, try some of these new tag lines…
“Tablo, just like your regular TV with just a little pixelation.”
“Tablo, just like your OTA signal, just a little worse.”
“Tablo, don’t expect a clear picture, we split your signal.”
In all fairness, the way OTA really works is you either have sufficient signal to have the “beautiful HD picture quality” (and uncompressed unlike most cable signals) or a multitude of variables (signal-to-noise ratio, distance from towers, weather, foliage, antenna height) result in you being at the edge of the digital cliff and you encounter some pixelation and then an entirely unusable signal, with the distance between those last 2 things being very little.
This Tablo post explains it pretty well…
https://www.tablotv.com/blog/getting-technical-over-air-tv-reception/#digitalcliff
And this explains it pretty much the same…
I totally understand your frustration and felt most of it myself, but the specifics of our situations doesn’t negate the fact that you can’t just put 100% of the blame on Tablo. It’s really more the quality of the signal going into the Tablo.
Andrew, the picture quality is very good.
You have a signal problem and I know how you feel, I had it 2 months ago. Finding the problem and the solution is not easy.
I had 100% signal strength, but didn’t know the quality and SNR. My antenna was well positioned, I didn’t know what to do.
Here is what I did and worked for me: added CM-3410 just before the coax cable going to the Tablo (50 feet long). At this time, my pixelation problem was gone but 2 channels were missing when scanning. Probably overdriving the tuner, I just put my antenna 90 degrees opposite and all is working very well since.
Wolfpack, what exactly does the attenuator do, in layman’s terms?
Reduces the signal strength.
FYI - we have a good guide to antenna accessories here:
https://www.tablotv.com/blog/how-to-perfect-over-air-tv-antenna-setup/
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Just rescan the channels and update the channel lineup after scan. This has been fixing mine. Probably software issue since I started noticing after skip commercial update