Oftentimes, users are in locations where they pick up more than one television market. This could be a great thing because it provides more options. However, with the way the Tablo system works, not only can you not take advantage of this benefit, but it also creates problems. Specifically, Tablo determines way in advance what channel to record when there are duplicates. Because signal strength does not always stay constant, Tablo can end up deciding to record on an inferior station and failing when another channel with a stronger signal is available. This problem could be easily rectified by having the system decide right before (within a minute) the recording which channel to use based off signal strength and channel availability. Based off how Tablo is advertised, I thought this was how it would work. In actuality, it’s pretty crude. It remembers the signal strength from the last time you did a channel scan. Then, it determines the channel to record on at the time you set the recording. If there are two or more channels that show the same signal strength, it picks the lowest number. For me, that results in a lot of missed recordings because my signal strength on some channels vary often
A possible near term solution is to set 2 manual recordings.
In the recording options, set the channel to record different on the 2 scheduled recordings.
Chas
Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.
Not even different market…I have THREE ESCAPE and GETTV all in the Austin TX market. Some come in better and I do NOT select channel 62 as it is always the worst, This would really be an excellent feature. Directly before recording (maybe a minute or two) check signal strength for recording coming up, and select strongest station.
If you have a 2-tuner model and three possible channels and your tablo has back-to-back recordings going on all tuners, how is that going to work?
If your recording is going to work, it will have access to a tuner. It can use that tuner to determine signal strength (i.e. which channel to record) right before it starts. If all tuners are taken up, your new recording wasn’t going to work anyway. It just needs a few seconds to check only the channels that are available for the recording.
I have a 2018 Sony. It has auto-tune. And I wouldn’t consider that feature to be fast. Especially when the signals are weak.