The majority of the recordings in my library have been failing of late. Not to mention that every command is extremely slow to respond. I have a Tablo 4th gen with an ONN streaming box. And yes, I tried that. I’ve been dealing with problems ever since I purchased this (right after it hit the market). Even my strongest channel, which is NBC, has glitches blamed on poor reception. I attempted to watch 5 programs this evening. Only one played all the way through. The most recent one shows a full recording - 1 hour and 2 minutes in length, which means it was successfully recorded, but it won’t even play. I get an instant failed to decode error message. No way past it. This thing is utterly maddening.
I just posted the above to get it off my chest, then went back to my Tablo to try watching my final recording - a Law and Order SVU - only to discover that it recorded 1 minute, from 9:00 to 9:01 and then stopped! And when I deleted the failed recording that simple (normally instant) command takes over a minute to accomplish. What a device.
You may want to turn off the amplification using the Tablo app if it isn’t already. I had a situation similar to yours and it was found the signal into the Tablo was too strong which resulted in failed recordings.
Thank you. Yes, I tried it with and without. Nightmarish scenarios arise regardless. It’s not always an issue but it’s really been bad of late. I’ve encountered just about every issue you can imagine in the couple of years I’ve owned this thing. The latest is the exceptionally slow reaction times and poor recordings.
If using external storage maybe that device is having a problem. As a brief test try running the Tablo with internal storage only, see if the problems remain. Of course you’d need to create a few new test recordings since the ones on the external storage will be inaccessible.
No, I’m not spending money to investigate and try out theories. I’ll make do with this or scrap it. I primarily chose this device over the alternatives because of saving the expense of additional hardware. I liked the onboard storage. Sharing with another tv wirelessly was the (distant) second reason I purchased it. If it keeps getting worse, I’ll just quit recording OTA TV shows. I watch TV via antenna without the Tablo as it is. It’s just a recording device to me. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t. Thank you for the advice, though. You may be onto something.
Connect your antenna directly to your TV. Many TVs have diagnostic settings that show signal strength. You can then make adjustments to your antenna for the best reception. You may need to mount your antenna outside.
Yes, my antenna is connected directly to my TV. I have a large channel master antenna mounted outside, above my roof. I use a two way splitter with one coax going to the Tablo, the other directly to the tv. When watching OTA TV, we bypass the Tablo altogether as their tuner(s) aren’t nearly as good as the TV’s. I primarily use the Tablo to record shows for future viewing. Recently, I’ve been experiencing all these issues with my recordings, even though reception is good. For some reason, the tiniest hitch in reception ruins an entire recording, while being practically unnoticeable when just watching tv. This is something I’ve known for quite some time, and since that is a rare circumstance, I live with it. This recent rash of ruined recordings is a new nuisance, though. And it coincides with a very slow responding Tablo unit overall. I’m not sure the cause of this latest problem… actually two problems that may or not be connected. I just posted about it here to report it and maybe find out if others experienced anything similar. And thank you to everybody for trying to help.