Samsung QLED 55" smart TV connected by WiFi to router, latest Tablo app. and 4th gen 4 tuner box connected by WiFi to the same router, which has the WAN connection. All the TV channels are scanned and working, the EPG is populated. Almost all channels are 4 green boxes for signal strength.
Often when opening the Tablo app, it goes through the opening screen, then the top menu will appear with Live etc. and the busy wheel in the center goes into spinorama mode. About one times in 4 it never stops. Stuck there. Ditto for moving over to Library to watch a recording. It often just spins. The TV remote 'back" button is ignored. Use TV remote “home” button to exit and then restart the app, straight back to perpetual spinning. Power the TV off and on, Tablo will be spinning. Go into the TV App page, click and hold over the Tablo app and Reinstall. Then I can start Tablo and usually it won’t be spinning and I can view live or recorded shows. This happens when the prior channel is a 4 green strength channel that is totally solid when watching it, so it’s not a TV signal issue.
Can you confirm you have good wireless signal to your TV? Run InSSIDer on your laptop and confirm WiFi is splashing in that area. Anything above -73 is the start of low signal.
Tablo is a Client to Client transfer, so it puts more of a load on the WiFi.
I was researching why my Home Assistant reports wifi Signal Strength as a percent instead of dBm and ran into this chart. Very helpful in this case…
Understanding wifi dBm readings:
-30 dBm: A perfect, extremely strong signal (e.g., right next to the router).
-50 dBm: Excellent signal, ideal for all activities.
-60 dBm: Good, reliable strength.
-67 dBm: Minimum for reliable online services.
-70 dBm: Okay, but expect slowdowns.
-80 dBm: Weak signal, significant buffering.
-90 dBm: Very weak, likely disconnected.
This is our typical signal strength while using the FireTV Stick 4k Max…right about -62 dBm (if that’s what 62% means), which is good but not great. Not much room for signal loss.
The TV and the Tablo are both on WiFi BOLTON5 network. This is the 5GHz channel on the router, Asus RT-AX86U Pro router running Asuswrt-Merlin 3006.102.6 firmware, the latest.
I think I have to revise my previous post. After digging further, I found that some vendors use % as their measure of network strength (stoopid Netgear Orbi). It’s not easily converted to dBm, so I used InSSIDer and it shows -35 for the high end at the TV and -50 dBm on the lower side when I put the laptop screen behind the TV (where the FireTV Stick is located). So, my signal is stronger than I thought.
Have you tried a different channel on BOLTON5 (eg 153)? When you’re having issues with a strong signal, suspect interference/adjacent channel issues.
Router WiFi 5GHz channel 153 made no difference. If anything, the signal strength was slightly lower. Still get Tablo app spinorama mode that goes away temporarily when the app is reinstalled. I set the router back to Auto and it likes channel 36.
I did install Tablo on the phone for the inital intall, but don’t use it for viewing. Just now I tried tuning to live TV, then watching a recording, going back and forth, no problem at all. The live EPG comes up immediately, don’t even see the spinorama. Opening the Library menu I see a spin for maybe 1/4 second, then its gone and everything is as it should be. The phone is on the same router WiFi as everything else. Thanks for the suggestion, it confirms again that there is good WiFi.
MY Samsung s90f experiences random issues with Tablo 4th generation app. It is connected 5g WiFi just like my iPhone and Rokus but the Samsung will just spin occasionally but my other devices work just fine. On Sunday I had to mirror my iPhone Tablo session to my Samsung so I could watch the football game. THe Samsung never supports offline mode where the iPhone does (I had added an enhancement request in a previous post to give us clients the option to go into offline mode ourselves). There definitely is something not working correctly with the Samsung app. I’m willing to help support work on this but someone has to reach out to me.
Are there any humans answering the Tablo official support emails? I swear the replies are all AI generated. The replies come back in seconds after I send an email, faster than a human can type.
