Playback pausing

Over the part year or so, I have tried to troubleshoot playback problems and now have a solid state hard drive on the Tablo, one of the best and fastest gaming routers available and now a new Samsung TV (which has not been installed yet).

I was getting tired of playback problems when watching recorded shows on a dumb TV with a Roku. I watched the same show on my Samsung TV and there were no playback problems. I decided it was time to get away from Roku and the dumb TV.

I got the replacement TV but have bit installed it yet. I am watching TV on my living room Samsung and it is now pausing. I am really hesitant to open the new TV box when the problem seems to be everywhere. Before anyone asks, tonight I have rebooted the Tablo, the router and the Samsung TV. I will also add that I have no buffering problems with Hulu, Netflix, YouTube or Prime video. I would think that would validate my network and router.

I am getting very frustrated with this.

The other apps you mention that stream without buffer issues aren’t exactly an apples to apples comparison. They are streaming external content down to your home network whereas as Tablo is real-time transcoding content and streaming it across your internal/local network.

I’ve always had better luck using a separate playback device (i.e. Roku, Shield TV, etc.) and we currently use the Chromecast with Google TV for Tablo playback and have no issues.

Maybe I missed it but did you mention whether your Tablo is connected to your network via Ethernet or wirelessly?

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How is your Tablo connected to your router? Try hard wiring with an Ethernet cable to your router.

ICYMI: There are many users sadly disappointed with the Samsung only app for the tablo, easily searched.

I am currently using WiFi but should be able to run a wire. As far as my comment about other streaming services, when I tested that with my new router, I had three TVs streaming different content at the same time. I figured that should have stressed my WiFi to a point that it was not the problem. Yes, they all steam in from my ISP but once they hit the router, it is all internal network via WiFi.

If I am still missing the point, please explain.

P.S. Thank you for the responses.

This does not test the WiFi signal or WiFi speed between your Tablo and router. The Tablo stream has to go from Tablo to router via WiFi and then from router to streaming device via WiFi. Streaming from say Netflix only tests the router to streaming device WiFi speed. Get it now?

Read this post by Tablo, you might find it helpful.

https://community.tablotv.com/t/super-bowl-sunday-troubleshooting-tips/

I went with the basic assumption that if the Tablo wasn’t able to adequately work via WiFi alone, it would not (or should not) have been produced with it. That is why I tested the capacity of the router, which had much more capacity than three streaming channels to different devices. I would not have expected the WiFi on the Tablo to be the bottleneck. Now, do you understand what I’m saying?

In addition, I will say that when I first got the Tablo, it was fine, still over WiFi on a much smaller router. Only after a while did it start glitching. That’s when I got the SSD instead of a spinning HD. Then went with a beefier router. Even now, with a wire running through my house to the Tablo, it glitched within a minute of starting a playback. I will give it a longer run at lunchtime, when it happens the most on the dumb tv and roku. But as a mentioned, it was glitching on the Samsung last night.

Thank you for the link to the article but I have been there many times. As far as the recording and live tv qualities, they are currently set at HD 720 - 5 Mbps (recommended). They have been there for quite a while from previous attempts to fix. This has just gotten worse in the past few weeks or so.

What is the model number of the Roku you have? Maybe you can try hard wiring the Roku too, just for a test. Or maybe you can move your router to a central location in the house to better distribute the WiFi signal.

Maybe update the firmware on the router. What is the make and model of the router anyway?

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The router is an ASUS Rapture AX11000. I currently tested bandwidth using the Samsung TV, Roku on the dumb tv, and two ipads, all streaming movies at the same time. They were all within 10 feet of each other. No problems.

Edited to add that the Roku is a 3920x. When i looked a few months ago, I didn’t see anything better for about the same price. If i was going to spend a lot, I might as well get a smart TV, which I just did but haven’t unpacked yet.

I went with the basic assumption that if the Tablo wasn’t able to adequately work via WiFi alone, it would not (or should not) have been produced with it. That is why I tested the capacity of the router, which had much more capacity than three streaming channels to different devices. I would not have expected the WiFi on the Tablo to be the bottleneck. Now, do you understand what I’m saying?

In addition, I will say that when I first got the Tablo, it was fine, still over WiFi. Only after a while did it start glitching. That’s when I got the SSD instead of a spinning HD. Then went with a beefier router. Even now, with a wire running through my house to the Tablo, it glitched within a minute of starting a playback. I will give it a longer run at lunchtime, when it happens the most on the dumb tv and roku.

Edited to add #2. This Roku does not have an Ethernet port.

Personal assumptions don’t don’t always equate to reality :frowning: Note, Setup & Networking | Over The Air (OTA) DVR | Tablo tablo specifically claims:

There are no speed or performance benefits from USB 3.0 and solid state drives (SSD) vs. USB 2.0 and spinning drives.

Minimum requirements are adequate.

As for wifi stress testing, most/many use MIMO - multiple-input and multiple-output. Having several devices not degrading signal throughput isn’t the same as increasing the load on a single device and looking at overall wifi throughput.

What changed? routers? and now the tablo has issues?

I use the same router.
I love it.

In each of the times that an upgrade to the system was made (router, SSD), nothing changed prior to that. I upgraded the router because we were getting to many WiFi devices and the old router simply wasn’t big enough. The SSD was installed at the recommendation by Tablo support. There was a firmware upgrade that I was advised to roll back after Tablo support logged into my system and looked. That helped at the time.
Typically, things get worse over time, as it has now. No new devices. No changes in any other devices. Nothing moved.

The Roku Premiere (3920) is single band wireless N on the 2.4 GHz band only. This can run into WiFi issues due to slow speed, or wireless interference if there are too many WiFi devices.

Try a device with Wireless AC that will on the 5 GHz network such as a Chromecast with Google TV or Roku Ultra Model 4800.

If you can hard wire your Tablo to the router, and hard wire the Samsung TV to your router to test streaming that would isolate the WiFi issue. If it still is causing problems, have you considered factory resetting your Tablo?

I have read other comments suggesting support tell users something “that sounds good” to move on to the next one. Their info says there’s no improvement, regardless of any drive (depending upon device) it’s limited to the USB 2.0 interface. Even if you have an internal SATA, it still has the same firmware limitations for streaming and network, which isn’t a bottleneck. It only needs to read as fast as it needs data over the network.

“at the time” So are you running current firmware now? If you can’t upgrade firmware, you’re going to be SOL when you loose the graphics.

These comments contradict each other.

This is an extremely unfounded over-generalized statement. Often things around older devices move forward, making older devices obsolete, not necessarily worse.


You started out, things work fine on one device (TV), but not well on another device (roku). Then the device which was issue free now has issues? For no apparent reasons? At one point tablo support claimed something to the effect - your tablo wasn't comparable with new firmware... but now it is??

Which specific tablo device do you have?

djk44883 - I’m tired of defending the past with you. Once I get tired of the Tablo, I will trash it and go somewhere else. But for completeness, I will answer your accusations.

I have no control over what Tech support tells me. I replaced the HD with SSD because that was what they were harping on and would not move forward until I did. That lead to the backing out the firmware update and waiting for the next one. When the next one was available, I took it. In the mean time, I had to reject any attempts for the Tablo to update itself. The change to the SSD and the router were over a year ago, not presently when the problems got worse. No changes in the past 6 months or longer. It seems to me that when you have eliminated as much as can as being the problem in a system, what is left is a likely suspect. The fact that problems are starting to present themselves on different devices (Samsung) as one of them get worse (Roku) also points to a common problem (Tablo).

I will no longer respond to this if all I am doing is defending the past.

theuser86 - I have ethernet to my TV console but will need to order a splitter to get to the Tablo, Samsung and my security camera system (currently, the camera system has the wire). That does not help the main problem directly as far as the Roku since neither it nor the dumb TV have ethernet connections. I might see some improvment with the Roku simply from had wiring the Tablo. We’ll see.

The Tablo has been factory reset several times. In fact, I may do it again now. Just looked it up and it deletes current recordings. I remember now having to catch up before doing it in the past. Maybe later if it gets to the point that it is simply unbearable to watch.

Thanks for the suggestion.

They weren’t meant as accusations against you… other post telling support give responses which don’t seem to follow along.

As updates are rolling updates, the next one had the same as the previous, well plus what’s new - supposedly fixing the issues with one tablo?

As your issues clear up temporarily, you feel “good” and support moves on to someone else. They give you responses, yet your issues is never actually fixed –

Getting to the root cause, fully understanding everything at play, maybe things can actually get fixed instead of saying “there, that makes things good so it must be fixed” goodbye.

Just guessing and suggesting change this and swap out that… hoping for the best isn’t finding a problem.

But it frequently finds the solution.

Often, but look at the frustration it puts people through. At least provide a disclaimer, not sure, so before you spend more money, this is a suggestion. It should/might/maybe/hopefully work, I think it has worked for others, but they might have just got fed up and never called back. While there are a few we know it didn’t.