I love my Tablo dual HDMI, except for one small thing that irritates me more than anything…
“Timeout waiting for video data”
Every time this message pops up for me for even a moderate signal, I have to constantly hit “Retry Playback”. Why does this message exist? I’m not sure.
If I wanted to stop watching a channel with a moderate signal, then I can change the channel myself. But now I have to keep the remote in my hand because of this message popping up every 2 minutes. Please remove this message. Makes my TV viewing experience very unpleasant.
I too have the same complaint as “Tubers”. I’ve been using my TV’s built in tuner and all has been fine. On the rare occasion that the signal fails for a brief second, the program continues on right away. Not with the Tablo and as “Tubers” mentions, its a pain the the tail to have to hit retry. Often times I run the TV for background, such as the news, while I’m working around the house so having to stop what I’m doing to go hit “retry” to resume is irritating. This only happens once about once or twice a day, sometimes more when atmospherical conditions degrade the signal a bit. I primarily picked up the Tablo for live TV and the ability to pause and rewind, very infrequent recordings, and a decent Guide. I have no interest in rebroadcasting to a Roku or Firestick. I’ve only had the Tablo for a few days now but It’s irritating enough that if this is just how the Tablo operates and if there is no fix, it’s back to Amazon… hopefully Tablo is listening but it’s been more than a month since “Tuber” posted the comment so I’m not overly hopeful. Too bad because it’s otherwise a decent product with only a few minor glitches so far.
I agree wholeheartedly. Please get rid of this and have it auto retry. I think it would be especially bad when recording as it would just stop your recording.
I am having the same issue with my Tablo QUAD HDMI. Sometimes it might be that I guess something causes a brief disruption or interference in the signal since I live in the city, but when I watch without Tablo and straight to my TV I don’t get this. Other times I have no idea what is causing it. Is there a possible bug in the Tablo software?
Thanks,
Jim
Years ago, when there was interference (something as simple as wind blowing leaves in the trees, a lightning strike or a plane flying overhead), the Tablo DVRs would buffer, then if it couldn’t retune the channel quickly, it kicked you back to the main menu. They put the “retry” screen so that a user could recover the stream without trying to retune the channel.
The reason for this, the Tablo DVR has to re-encode the signal for streaming (this is why it takes 3-5 second on average to tune a channel), and interference can create a break in the stream (this is overly simplified - I don’t know all the technical details on this).
Although I don’t own and HDMI model, the HDMI models still allow for streaming to other devices on your network, and would still need to process streams to accomplish that. I am sure that a Tablo Tech could answer definitely on that.
Regardless, the Tablo DVRs Quad or Dual (or any in my opinion) should automatically reconnect. I say this because if this occurs when I am recording for example one that is an hour long and it occurs 5 minutes into the show I know that for the next 55 minutes Tablo will just be showing that screen for the recorded show. As a Software Engineer I think this is a bug and they should change it. When you watch TV without Tablo and my TV loses the signal for a second it doesn’t ask me if I want to watch when the signal comes back, it just shows me the program I’m watching.
Thanks,
Jim
If any Tablo Engineer would like to discuss feel free to reach out to me I would be happy to give my email or call you.
There is also another bug where when I first wake up in the morning and select a channel I get video but no audio. I have to select another channel, I get both, and then go back to the first channel and I get both. But the first bug is the most annoying, please fix.