I just picked up a Tablo 4-tuner this last week, trying to cut the cord. So far I have been very impressed with the functionality but running into a few issues when trying to playback on a TV.
I’ve tried playing Live TV and recordings and anytime it is an HD channel I get constant buffering when played over Chromecast. SD channels work without any issue. If I play the same recordings through the Android app or through the web, everything plays back perfectly without any buffering. So I believe the problem to be with the playback over Chromecast only.
I have the Tablo hardwired to the router and the Chromecast is in the same room (5 feet away from router). I don’t have a problem playing on any other wireless device (laptop, Android tablet, Android phone). Also, I have set the recording quality to 720p - Roku/Chromecast. I’d prefer not to go down to 480p as I want to keep the HD quality if possible.
Are there any settings I’m missing to make this work for Chromecast? Are there plans to optimize playback for Chromecast? Is my best bet to get a Roku 3 for each of my TV’s?
I’ve tried through a couple of devices, laptop, nexus 7 tablet, galaxy s4 phone. I am using a dual band Wireless N router as well.
I tried a couple of recordings at standard def quality, and those seemed to play through fine without buffering, so it may just be a throughput issue of anything over 480p when using the Chromecast. The 1080p recordings worked fine on all of my devices as long as I didn’t cast them to the TV.
Will Roku 3 have the same issues, or is it better with WiFi throughput? I’d like to at least have 720p on the TV or it may be a difficult sell to my wife to get rid of satellite.
I can play back at 1080p on my Chromecast (using my Moto G phone as a source, which is limited to 2.4 Ghz wireless N band), which is located on a completely different floor of my house. I am using a Netgear Nighthawk (R7000) router, which is a pretty powerful router.
I had constant buffering issues when using my notebook and Chrome to cast to Chromecast. I switched over to our Moto X phone for the same show and the buffering pretty much went away. The shows were recorded at 720p not the Roku/Chromecast setting.
I was very surprised to see the buffering issues with my notebook since the connection was often up to 300 Mbps to the Wi-Fi router and the lowest it dropped was 150 Mbps the Wi-Fi router.
The phones don’t have that capability to my knowledge.
the issue I ran into using the phone and the 'droid app is that the FF 30 seconds doesn’t REALLY fast forward. It simple seems to pause the display but the timers keep counting down in real seconds so while you don’t see and hear the commercial, it still takes 4 minutes to FF through 4 minutes of content!
It takes 3 to 4 touches of the 30 second FF to get through 60 seconds of content at times.
On the notebook with Windows 7, Chrome and Chromecast the 30 second FF does indeed skip 30 seconds of content and zips you ahead.
Anyway, my point is that I have buffering issues with the browser based app but not so much with the Android app on a phone.
I also bought a Nexus Player at the same time as the Tablo. So I had both a Chromecast and the Nexus Player to experiment with. The Tablo never streamed to the Chromcase at all. But to the Nexus Player, it works reasonably well. It still stops and buffers somewhat frequently, but is usable. So I suspect moving to the 5Ghz network helped. Tablo really needs to fix this. There is no reason for it.
Still have buffering issues when streaming using the webapp. Solution i had to use is to use my Android phone to cast to the 2.4Ghz Chromecast (generation 1) device instead of via the webapp. Didn’t have any buffering issues then. But can’t scroll as easily using Android as you can on the desktop app. But beware… Tablo’s chromecast implemenation seems to be incrorrect. My Android device CPU usage skyrockets, and gets very hot (thus draining the batter very quickly). Tablo support does not seem to be interested in resolving this issue as you can tell.
Also getting a Nexus Player like some have suggested is like saying “If you arm hurts just cut it off”… And i wouldn’t be surprised if the Nexus Player runs hotter than normal as well if there is a CPU overutilization issue. So peeps recomending to get a Nexus Player may be buying another one… or two for themselves down the road…
While the screen is on, it fluctuates from low teens to 38% max. With screen off, I can’t exactly tell since, well, the screen’s off. The Nexus is cool to the touch with the screen off when I was watching a show for half an hour.
the thing with “chromecasting” is that you are effectively pushing double the data. You need to go Tablo-> Device, and then Device->Chromecast. Any minor issues in your network are amplified. I have always said that for streaming devices wired is always the preferential path, as it eliminates a lot of the performance variables that come with wireless.
That does not mean you can’t get good performance over Wi-Fi, as plenty have accomplished it, just that it is a lot harder, especially in more “crowded” environments.
And I like my NVidia Shield and my Nexus Player equally, each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
That is only true when you are screencasting. When you use Tablo it loads the Tablo app on the Chromecast and sends it directly to it. This is why you can shut your phone off while it is casting and the video will keep going on the Chromecast.
The Nexus is cool to the touch with the screen off when I was watching a show for half an hour.