I’ve categorized this under General Discussion because I just want to share this experience helping my neighbor set up their Gen4 Tablo. What a mess.
They have what I would consider a typical home fiber network with router and Tablo next to each other and very close to their main Roku - within 20’. They’re also using the Tablo antenna, which seems to be working well for them, in a bottom floor window on the same side as the broadcast towers.
Originally, it appears they set this up using their old Spectrum cable network and just recently moved to fiber, so the wifi was no longer properly configured.
This is where I came in to help them get it working.
First, the biggest trouble was trying to clear the old wifi on the Tablo and use Ethernet. I still don’t know whether it’s working on wifi or Ethernet as I didn’t have access to their router to check.
One painful item is clearing the wifi to switch to Ethernet. We tried to follow these instructions and these instructions, but they just didn’t work. Mainly, there was no button to Forget This Tablo or Switch to This Tablo. Only the Edit Wi-Fi button was available. When trying to edit the wifi, it just wouldn’t connect, even though the Tablo and iPhone were right next to the router.
It was so painful that I kept apologizing to my neighbor for these issues and things just not working well.
I eventually performed a factory reset on their unit hoping this would clear the wifi. I’m not convinced that this worked, but we eventually got it connected, hopefully on Ethernet, and we were finally able to bring it up on the Roku. Here is where Tablo should add to their My Status page - maybe move or add some helpful functions for configuring the Tablo network to this page instead of in the app.
The channel scan was relatively quick and we were able to view the Live Grid and select and watch a channel. However, we weren’t able to record anything (which is their whole reason for having the Tablo).
We got it working on a Roku Express in another room and I left once that was up and running. I think the Roku is stable and it is probably running on Ethernet because I don’t think we saw any more Network Connection Lost errors. Oh ya, these ‘errors’ kept popping up earlier while trying to connect to wifi.
The biggest issue when I left was not able to record (An error has occurred - Error Loading Airing Details - Dismiss). And it was an exhausting experience.
So, I do not doubt any of the user experiences I’ve seen on this site. This was not a good experience for a somewhat-seasoned Tablo user so I can’t imagine what people are going through as a new user. It seems like Tablo is trying to engineer all the issues out of it and by doing so, they’re making it more difficult to set up.
Just my 2¢.
