See what happens if you offer to implement a suggestion? More requests for functions!
I would really, really like some under-the-cover stats, such as connections speed, buffering, and in the case of live TV the signal strength - if you save signal strength data, it’d be nice to have it for the show when I watch it and wonder if it was signal interference or whatever that I should blame.
I’d like this in a transparent overlay on the current program.
Something like this, which I captured from YouTube TV and is similar in normal Youtube
Also, while I’m on an asking spree, while the “5 green dots” are good for consumers, as a wanna-be nerd, I’d like more details on signal strengths. If I connect my antenna to my TV, I can get a much better indication of signal strength. Surely there’s an interface somewhere in all that hardware that you can pull the signal strength out of and display it?
We’ve talked a bit about this recently but we haven’t settled on if/when/how to implement some additional/more granular signal strength stats.
If anyone else has a particular request in this vein, feel free to chime in and as we discuss this more I’ll be sure to share the thread with the team.
1)
I would really like to be able to track signal strength over time and per channel. Even if it means the system is in some special analysis state. It would be nice to be able to do this on channels that don’t show up on a scan, too.
There are 2 channels that I barely get. They don’t always show up in a channel scan. This makes it tricky to figure out if I can make any small antenna alignment adjustments to bring those particular channels in better.
I tried putting an amp on the line to boost signal but it was either crap or (more likely) overloaded the good channels. It ended up killing most of my channels but got me one new one (beyond the 2 I mentioned). I didn’t really want that particular channel, so the booster got removed. It would be nice to know for sure if it was overloading the other signals or not.
2)
Some measure of signal clarity or signal to noise measurement. I pick up some channels that might be close to cellular spectrum. It would be good to see if I am getting interference from those to decide if I should get a filter or not. Again, graph over time would be most helpful as I could try a “test” by making a call. Also do some tests to see if WiFi or microwave causes any issues.
Note: I get all my signals from bounce off the building across the parking lot. It’s got some funny angles and even a few degrees of shift on the antenna can make a big difference for me. Most come in as orange (3 dots) a few come in as green (5 dots). The two I have issues with (noted above) come in at red (1 dot). Weather and time-of-day affects this a lot.
I’m sure a simple, single channel at a time, signal meter option wouldn’t be that hard to do.
But I can only imagine what a can of worms that would open up. Tablo would probably have to hire a new person just to educate users and answer forum posts on what the information means.
What I just did tonight was put a splitter on the indoor antenna. One to Tablo and one to tv. Put on station having problems on, and moved antenna until pucture was perfect. Rescanned Tablo and all green.
Smart! I set mine up this way as well, when I first installed the Tablo. I use the native TV tuner to learn signal strength (has a nice little indicator). During initial setup and scan, this also let me know which stations I wanted to pull through the Tablo Guide (if it wasn’t full strength, didn’t want to mess with it).
