Please Add Real Time Signal Strength

Does any TV and their tuners keep the real time strength of all their channels? Or does the user have to select a specific channel and request signal strength.

This would be a killer feature. One more vote from me.

I agree this would be a nice feature that shows on the TV Guide as you are going through the channels.

Moving through the Live TV Guide doesn’t appear to tune any channels until the user selects play or watch. If you have 15-20 channels and the tablo had to tune each channel as it scrolls through the guide it could take 3-4 minutes to transverse the guide.

1 Like

Agreed. This is sorely needed!

@zippy …speaking of signal/station strength …i have seen some expensive digital tuner boxes that show on every chanell…but in our case, we can only rely on the Tablo tuners, so i go by the 5 green dot strength meter on the chanell scan in the ipad Tablo app

I do all my updating thru the ipad app, not the appletv of course because it lacks that iOS functionality

After doing a new channel scan after repositioning and adding height to my rooftop antenna, I just added the 1080,720,480 all 5 green dots on ipad stations for their respective ratios. Stations that were yellow or red I did not add by the way they were stations I did not want anyway.
All we care about is local abc,nbc,cbs,fox,…but i sure like the grit,cozitv,justice,heroicon,cw, 3 ion stations,decades,pbs,escape,mvies,revn,metv…all these are 5 green dot either …1 of those 3 ratios and my samsung 4 k tv has and incredible up scaler that makes even 480 look good.

The dots on the app are crazy wild in their readings also. I’m having a heck of a time getting a low VHF channel (why on earth they still broadcast on low VHF, I’ll never know, but it’s the local CBS & CW affiliate, so I kinda want to get it). Anyway, on one scan, it’ll show 5 green bars (but the station doesn’t come in very well), on another scan, it’ll show one red. Well, dot’s I guess, not bars. Regardless, a better and more accurate signal strength indicator is sorely needed!

@silence
A friend of mine was experiencing what you are describing and he had forgotten about a windstorm and reposition his antenna. As soon as he repositioned his roof antenna with the compass and hen re-channel scan he got every channel he wanted in five green dots.

Thanks for trying, but we just moved and I aimed the antenna right before doing these two scans, that’s why it stood out to me so strongly. Two scans, no antenna movement at all, and Tablo reported completely different results.

I agree. A dynamic signal strength meter is needed. Since this request is two years old, it doesn’t seem like we are going to get it.

1 Like

Not entirely on topic but I used THIS, THIS, and a compass on my phone for my final antenna positioning. Worked amazingly well.

Don’t give up hope.
The following list is not all inclusive, but you’ll get the idea.

April 2014, save last N episodes of a series requested (currently available):

July 2014, commercial skip requested (currently in beta):

September 2015, switching channels without going back to Live TV Guide requested (currently available):

2 Likes

+1 (for the bump)

1 Like

I’ll add to this and say I’d like there to be an audio representation of this. On Tivo, as the signal gets stronger, the pitch of the tone gets higher. So without seeing my tv, I can “hear” if the quality is better as I move around the antenna. In musical terms, let’s say 20% signal is a C. As you get to 30% it goes to D, 40% E, etc.

One note about using tablo for “real time” signal strength - for antenna adjustment. Depending on your network and connectivity, and this may or may not be an issue for everyone - network latency.

Compared to a TV which displays exactly - in real time. So if you have all wireless connections, and it’s loaded -for example- it could be a noticeable delay until you get a response.

But then this is per-user situation – If tablo is going to give an error “Weak Signal” it should provide some facility to correct it.

The first minimal value would be to do it on the channel setup page.

As a signal seekers, I can highlight a channel in the channel scan results and have the signal strength refresh every 5s so that I may adjust my TV to show the signal strength. As a seeker, if I am not selecting any channel, the entire channel list is re-scanned while on the scan screen so that I can have my entire channel list re-scanned while I adjust the antenna and it will continuously repopulate the list until I get the configuration that I desire.

The latency of your wireless network should be negligible. If you are suffering that much latency then you are having some kind of broadcast storm or other kind of packet loss causing other issues in your network do doubt. If you are doing this remotely from your phone over the internet, then I agree with your possible lag concerns. I would be curious how you setup your antenna rotor to be adjusted remotely :slight_smile:

My comment was meant as overly generalized - it would/could vary greatly based on individual setup and understanding. So, for the masses, it could cause more issues than the benefits for those who understand what they’re doing.

Me, my TV has a signal strength and signal quality meters for channel tuning (LG brands). Actually my antenna has pretty much been set long before the digital technology. Just stop turning when the picture was stable.

A real time indication of signal strength would be helpful in pointing an antenna.

But it would be of even more helpful in resolving some support questions.

Some questions on this forum are obviously related to reception problems. Either the signal is too weak or in more confusing cases the signal is too strong. The Tablo user is in no position to know the details of either case.

Any user should be able to report a number from a bar graph and over some period of time learn what to expect from different incoming signal levels.

In addition, most users would not report intermittantly poor recordings if the user could see that the signal strength was lower on the channel which sometimes yielded poor recordings. Instead they would just stop recording on that channel.

There are probably other issues which reflect the side affects of weak or strong signal strengths but are unknown because there is no easy access to the information.

Knowlegde is power.

2 Likes

Absolutely! Often a recording fails, thumbnails not created, or system reboots with the message “weak signal”… with no way to determine how to adjust it to suit the tablo’s needs.