Super Bowl Sunday: Troubleshooting Tips

Hey there,

If you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance you’re going to watch the Super Bowl this weekend.

In case you run into any issues while watching the game, we’d like to share a couple of the most common problems we hear from our users and how to get them resolved quickly:

  1. Buffering: your video is not playing smoothly. It’s pausing frequently to load, causing you to fall behind during the game.

The fastest way to solve this issue is to change your Tablo’s live TV and Recording quality settings. Try lowering them down one notch to start, and see if the playback is smoother. If you change these settings midway through a live TV stream, reboot your Tablo (tap the blue reset button on the back of the Tablo once) to have the settings change take immediate effect.

You can find more details on how to solve buffering issues here: Solving Buffering Problems – Tablo

  1. Pixelation: your video is pixelated, frames are dropping, and it’s hard to see what’s going on.

The majority of the time, this is the result of OTA reception issues. Try adjusting your antenna to improve its reception, and tune back into the game to see if the pixelation is gone.

There’s a ton of OTA reception resources out there to help. Here are a few:

  1. Connectivity: Your app can’t “find” the Tablo, or they can “see” it, but connection fails. This is usually a local network issue. Rebooting your Tablo will solve this the majority of the time.

If rebooting the Tablo doesn’t do the trick, try rebooting your router next. More details and next steps can be found here: Troubleshooting Connectivity Issues – Tablo

  1. You’re receiving error messages referencing ‘Surround Sound’ support, or you’re receiving video on live TV but without audio.

Usually, this is because you have enabled the ‘Surround Sound’ setting on the Tablo, but the device you’re using to watch the stream does not support Surround Sound.

The fastest way to fix this is: turn the Surround Sound feature OFF, reboot the Tablo, and tune back into your live stream. More details on how this feature works here:

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Here is a question if your plan on recording the superbowl.

If your tablo is working perfectly should you risk upgrading your firmware before the game?

Do large retail companies upgrade their ordering software just before blackfriday?

Frequently… lol

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That was a trick question. My wife and I worked for major database software companies for over 42 years.

Any software upgrades start local company testing in September.

The last fubar I saw was 10 years ago when a well respected, high volume, big name retailer failed to adequately test before blackfriday.

They installed the new software at the start of the week and since their issue was volume related when the volume went up throughput went down. They were losing over $10 million dollars of potential sales per hour. during blackfriday.

So a bunch of us had to leave thanksgiving events and figure what was wrong.

Needless to say the retailer’s CTO wasn’t around Monday.