Tablo 2 tuner still letting me down

Support & Troubleshooting
1

I am confident the tablo 's tuner is the culprit.
I am located in Toronto, I have line of sight of the CN Tower, I am 5km from the lake. I have amazing reception with the 2010 plasma Panasonic TV, the TAblo used to be comparable with the number of channels it received. Now it struggles to show me the local channels.
I have ran a new coax to a new antenna on the roof, still no improvement. I have even tried an indoor rabbit ears, which my TV still manages to catch 15 channels with, the Tablo gets none.
I put in a ticket with Tablo this past summer, and I was told its my problem and that the tuner is fine. Tablo terminated communications with me.
I also tried a Homeworx dvr for $50, and it tuned in more channels than the Tablo.
I have tried power splitter, and lte filter, it just makes it worse with Tablo.

What antenna setups are Toronto and area users using?

2

May I ask how long you’ve had the Tablo for and whether there ever was a time you had good reception on the Tablo? From what you report, seems you have a reasonable reception.for other devices and I’m wondering what convinced you to try for so long to make the Tablo work?

I’m wondering if you have an electronics retailer like Best Buy in your area? I don’t like to suggest these types of behavior, but oftentimes it’s the only recourse. Go get a device from them (or from Amazon or Newegg) and if it doesn’t work, then you can return it. That’s how I got my Tablo. If I had poor channel reception out of the box, there wouldn’t be a Tablo in my house, since I’d assume it wasn’t working for me.

Did Tablo Tech support look at logs, etc. on the Tablo to determine that “it was your problem” to paraphrase? Again, that seem to have been the appropriate time to return the Table to the point of sale unless Tablo support offered additional steps you could take to improve performance.

Just detail for me the steps you perform to do side-by-side testing. For me, it want’ an easy device to do a true side-by-side comparison of my native TV reception vs over-Tablo reception (My wife balked at helping me carry a 65-inc TV upstairs to the room where I keep the electronics :O) so the final steps were a leap of faith that fortunately turned out well.

I’ve heard that longer coaxial runs cause signal loss and signal interference, hence the need for amplifiers and splitters (again, I’m lucky in that my setup works perfectly with a flat antenna stuck in a window - bought from Amazon, ofc)

I do notice differences when that antenna’s amplifier is on or off.

From the antenna, I have my Tablo hardwired via Ethernet into the router, and then it’s wireless to the one viewing room and over Ethernet to the other room. I’ve also, before going the Tablo route upgraded my WiFi and I’ve measured that I can nominally get in excess of 30Mbps throughput at the Roku or the TV that runs the Tablo app - I an shocked that very strong 802.11ac signals over relatively short distances are about 40-50Mbps slower than a native Ethernet, but I’ve learned to live with it. My next project is to get Ethernet to the 2nd viewing room. :slight_smile:

Sorry if all of this seem long-winded and pointless, I’m just trying to see if there in your setup are areas where the Tablo workflow could be interrupted. Can you for instance screenshot the mobile setup app channel list?

In the end though, if you think it’s a “Just that one Tablo” I’d see if the fine folks at Tablo won’t offer you a trade-in or a goo deal on a refurb. If you think it’s endemic to Tablo (and here, hopefully if you provide your zip code. other local Tablo users can chime in with their experiences) then you should move off Tablo. Tivo, HDHomerun, Sling, YouTubeTV are all alternatives that may be a little more satisfying, Even Plex has some offerings.

3

Tablo was purchased from Amazon.ca in late Jan. 2017. It worked great for about four or five months. I began getting the weak signal message into June 2017 on most channels. It coincided with an update at the time. I rarely watch TV, and needed a pvr to catch up on sitcoms with my wife after the kids go to sleep, 1 maybe 2 shows a night. That is when I began to look into the weak signal message. By then, I was well beyond the return date option.
My TV is consistent with reception. The Tablo however was only picking up 5-6 channels, when it was picking up 20+ when I first bought it.
I really like to concept of it, and the menu I won’t lie is pretty great! If only the tuner would behave. I put it a ticket, and for about two weeks(pain in the arse to communicate through email) I had left the Tablo for remote access, we had been back and forth as Tablo tested and reverted firmware to a last know good state… They simply told me its my problem.
I have a roof mounted Focus 8 bay antenna, which was connected directly to the TAblo with a mere 40-50’ coax, unsplit. I then added a splitter after I had the “weak signal” bs msg. I found my TV was still picking up the same channels as always.
I have since ran a new cable to the roof, no change.
I have added a powered 2way splitter, and a lte filter, I actually lost even more channels with it powered.
I have tried an old rabbit ears rca type indoor powered(adjustable gain), which my TV can pick up 15-18 channels with (with roof top 8bay It receives 28-30 channels) Tablo picks up nothing with the indoor rabbit ears.
Interesting finding though, I have added couplings and three non-powered splitters(cheap radio shack type) trying to increase resistance in the coax signal, and that actually improved signal with the TAblo tuner using the 8 bay roof top, from 5-6 to 11-13 channels.
Tablo is connected wired to my network modem with Bell, not using Wifi.
I had previously tried an amazon pvr (COBY), and it received more channels than the TAblo does now.
Today, I bought and tried a ( eaglestar pro 180deg hd antenna ) I lost long range channels with my TV, but the TAblo seems more stable with local channels now.( I am a mere 20KM from the CN tower)
I would think that local channels should come in easy and steady with even the cheapest antenna setup, which is not the case with TAblo.
I would love to stick with TAblo and try a another unit. Unfortunately Tablo doesnt have a brick and mortar location for service, but they dont seem interested in my situation. I am electrician and I am exhausting all my options for troubleshooting. I am 99% confident the issue is the unit itself since it used to work well, and now it doesnt. I also find its running very hot, i keep it propped on two pencils to space it from the tv bench it sits on.
Thanks to all who have read this far. This week I will attempt to phone Tablo and find a solution , seeing as email communication got me nowhere.

4

The heat thing was what brought me to the forum first. I’ve never encountered an electronic device running at that temperature. Apparently that’s within Tablo’s design limitations - they made it fanless and put the heatsink on the bottom. Many here have esoteric things like laptop coolers to reduce the temperature. I put mine on a baking rack. I’ve seen where Tablo told one poster not to use a metal trivet, as that could interfere with the signal.

It seems that you exhausted all non-Tablo routes of investigation. The one thing I’ve seen mention on here is that too strong a signal can actually seem to Tablo like too weak a signal, so if you amplify too much, you might lose signal.

If you do call Tablo, please come back and tell us how it worked out for you - I can see that you’d rather not try a 2nd tablo even if it becomes apparent that it is the Tablo that’s defective. That’s unfortunate.

5

I read about the silicon dust hdhomerun device. Bought it and set it up. It received all the same channels as my TV does. Guide is nice and simple too. Need to buy a NAS hard drive in order for dvr to work along with $35 for the year subscription. It is much quicker at navigating.
I can’t wait to hear from Tablo this week. I’ve already paid my one year subscription to them back in March. I hope that wasn’t a mistake.

6

Tablo has since agreed to send me a new Tablo.
It tunes in steady channels like my tv does.
It also runs less hot. It runs warm, not hot like the previous unit. Although I have not yet updated. I am hesitating on the update because the device is working well. I am waiting for a response from the Tablo team on whether or not to update.