It’s possible then that the new firmware is more sensitive to the weak signal issue. Was hoping we’d hear from Tablo support, but they don’t seem to want to comment on this.
The possibilities are:
- Tablo programmers never considered trapping this error. Put it on the plate TBD now that it is exposed more urgently.
- It is the third party tuner chip that causes the reboot and the Tablo has no control over a hardware reset that is outside their firmware.
- They are contacting the tuner chipmaker to see what they say about possibly trapping the error.
- Since a signal involves voltage and amperage, no one truly knows what happens when the electricity fluctuates in the extreme on this chip and its interface pins.
- There is no way to trap this electrical condition apart from soldering an extra capacitor
If it turns out to be a hardware issue as @MarkKindle suggests, such as the tuner forcing a hardware reset, or causing a dip/glitch in the power supply voltage, then there might not be a firmware solution that’s possible. Perhaps that’s why the Tablo folks haven’t weighed in… nothing they can do short of a design spin of the hardware.
Having worked with chips both in industry and breadboarding them at home, a chipmaker always supplies a data sheet detailing what conditions the pinout assignments represent. If there is no signal-out interface representing a “no frequency available” condition for a tuned in station…
In another thread I asked the question whether the Hauppauge USB Tablo tuner showed the same problem with the Tablo Engine. I had replaced an internal PCI based Hauppauge card which also had a tendency to reboot Windows 7 with a USB tuner and that condition did not happen thereafter.