Hi there. I have a fairly new Tablo. 4th Gen 2 tuner. I just finished checking out recordings made this morning. Two programs simultaneously. I watched one of them in real time. Picture was perfect. Later I wanted to play back the first part as I had missed it. Playback was awful! The recording was dreadful. Breakups and pixelating galore with screen freezes. Audio seemed fine.
I’m now watching the second program that was recorded at the same time. Recording is flawless. This seems to suggest one of the tuners may be malfunctioning.
Are you using the on-board storage or are you using external storage? If external what type and size?
Have you successfully recorded other programs from the same channel that was breaking up and pixelating? Did the breaking up and pixelation continue throughout the entire recording or did it only happen during the portion you originally missed.
If you had two programs recording at the same time and you where watching one of those programs live and the picture was perfect and then when watching that same recorded program it was bad, then why would you assume that the tuner was defective?
Sooo, when watching live, I was watching the channel via TV as if there was no Tablo. I knew Tablo was recording, so I assumed its reception would have been same as TV.
Watching later via Tablo playback was when I noticed issues that weren’t present when watching via TV and TV tuner.
And indeed, I have been quite successful in recording and playing back the channel with other programs. I believe this is the first time I’ve seen since getting the Tablo where I’ve recorded using both tuners.
Is your antenna split between the TV and Tablo or do they have separate antennas?
Have you tried turning the built in amplifier in the Tablo on or off to see if it makes a difference?
It’s possible that your signal quality is borderline and that your TV just may have a better tuner than the Tablo that is dividing the signal between two tuners.
Antenna coax comes from roof to an amplified four way splitter. Three of the cables go from the splitter to three different TVs in different rooms. The fourth goes into the Tablo. Each TV is equipped with a Roku. So far I’ve stuck with only watching recordings from Tablo. Not live TV.
I have a similar problem (bad tuner) with my Legacy Tablo, less than a year old. For several days now, when I have two channels scheduled to record at the same time, only one records. When I have only one channel scheduled to record and I try to watch live channel at the same time, I get an error message “No Tuner Available”. My set up is different than yours, my power antenna is direct to my Dual Lite Tablo. My Tablo is Ethernet from my T-Mobile internet and than WiFi to my smart tv through a Amazon Fire stick. The storage is external Seagate 1TB hard drive. Everything on the one tuner functions fine as I can watch live local channels fine when not recording. I think it’s a bad tuner. Forgot how long my warranty was, and I don’t think a reset is going to fix it. I have submitted a complaint to Tablo.
Not all tuners are built the same. You may want to consider an unbalanced 4 way to give your Tablo more DB signal. That’s a 7 DB per port right off the bat.
You’ve already correctly done the first step by contacting @TabloSupport. I’m sure they will want you to try several different tests before authorizing a warranty return, but hopefully they will get you fixed up.
Happy to report that everything appears to be working now. Apparently it was a bandwidth issue. I ordered, received, and installed a new Roku device. This one connects to my Internet via CAT5 cable. After installing a cable run and swapping the Roku it seems to be working well.