Or that could just be the app you’re using waiting for the table to finish it’s reboot 
My weak signal, crash/reboot issues occurred on 3 different Tablos, while watching 1 Live TV channel.
No scheduled recordings, and no other Live TV channels tuned in.
We bypassed that issue by purchasing good antennas, and mounting them as high as possible, in the best locations.
Still it’s not a solution, but rather a workaround.
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No, I don’t t think its rebooting when the dark window shows up with a small circle spinning in the middle of the screen. If the Tablo box was rebooting, it wouldn’t show a dark screen with a circle spinning in the middle of the screen. If it was rebooting, it would show nothing at all. So the spinning circle is a cue like the blue screen. It means “weak signal“ is present. That’s fantastic. This means that the box is somehow mitigating a bad signal situation. No crash, no reboot. But if the second tuner has a scheduled recording, and it fails, then the box crashes. I would think that there are two programming threads, each one handling their own recording. The mitigation exists, but maybe not well coordinated when more than one recording is taking place.
This sounds speculative and app specific.
If it could do this… there would never be a “weak signal” reboot… would there?
Perhaps the programing for your device/app “says” lets just display a spinner while we’re waiting for the tablo device to respond… we’re not sure what’s going on (since it’s rebooting).
Again, if a mitigation exists, then this topic wouldn’t exists. As for the number of recordings, it’s been some time since I’ve encountered this dilemma, I don’t believe it cares how many recordings are in effect. If a single tuner encounters this issue - that’s all it takes.
In the end – Sometimes it can keep from rebooting if it encounters the “weak signal” threshold… but other times… well it just can’t tolerate the “weak signal” and reboots - but not when anyone is looking? This isn’t just wishful thinking? Or some justification to reconcile a failure to understand?
OK - this has been rattling around in my head for quite some time. It’s mere speculation and I am a software guy not a hardware guy. If a tuner encounters a critical error it sends a signal to a lead on the tuner. Either all the tuners are tied together, i.e. one fails, they all fail, and/or the lead is hardwired to send a signal to reboot the device, not controllable via firmware. If this is the case then it is beyond Nuvyyo’s control. If not, then maybe there is a chance. Yep I said it.
I’ve had my recording failures, but never witnessed a crash (5 years going). I never reboot it.
I always believe every needs a dream!
You need something to believe in, why not your tablo?
Someday they’re sure to come out with another generation - tablo 4.2 maybe a double quad!! So the turners are isolated from each other… only half reboot at a time - but only under the rare occurrence of the dreaded “weak signal”.
Eight tuners, think of all the nonsense you could record with that!! Now there’s something to dream about, huh? I could finally complete my collection of Johnny Soko and His Flying Robot
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The user 86 my signal problems are tropospheric ducting. I’m not getting any reception this morning. Temp in OKC is 57 and here 32. No telling where that signal is, probably south Texas or Canada! Of course the channels on vhf are good and the channels you mentioned might be over driven. Only problem I have with those is when Tablo reboots. Never had a problem with those 14 with TiVo.
If I’m recording a game on ABC and NBC, at the same time as CBS. I don’t think I should lose all three because CBS has a few glitches.
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I’ve had my Tablo for quite a while. Not sure what their support cycle is. When companies create new products, they tend to support the legacy equipment for only so long. If there is a chipset problem and maybe a newer version of the box works without these flaws, I would consider even buying a newer model. Hard to gage without the proper info. It’s possible, if someone says they don’t see this problem at all. But how would we know unless we have specific version and or lot information related to ongoing problems?
I’m not a 100% sure, but I believe that you have separate tuners inside TVs, as you would in a Tablo. The signal gets split first, and then each tuner does its job. To have a balanced split, you either use a 2-way or a 4-way split, hence the 2 tuner or 4 tuner units. The same circuit board that splits it probably has a means to amp the signal before the split to mitigate the loss. The next balanced split would be an 8-way split, but now you have other dynamics that hurts keeping the signal in good balance. You would have to amp it close to 12 dbs, before you do an 8-way split. And if that 12 dbs brings up the total signal above 20 dbs, before it is split, then you overdrive the signal, and you end up with garbage. I would imagine that this is why it would be impractical to go above 4 tuners. So I don’t believe its just one tuner doing all the work and getting corrupted. It’s likely the coordination of the recordings that goes bad.
One would think that 2 years is plenty of time to fix this sort of problem… or put a new tuner in the box (a new unit was introduced 1 year ago).
Funny thing, I did have this problem, i.e. poor reception on some channels. And I never saw a single reboot. Never… sometimes I did have system freezes and crashes. But I did 3 things that stopped the problem: (1) put a better antenna… in attic, instead of living room, (2) added a fan to keep unit cool, and last but not least (3) severely cutback the number of recording conflicts (in fact, I eliminated ALL recording conflicts).
Since doing these 3 things, my Tablo runs like a top. No freezes, no pixelization, nothing. Just a load a good recordings.
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The quote I posted from TabloTV was from May 2019, when they briefly explained why… well not really but had some explanation.
But a TV only tunes one channel at a time unlike a table. What would it use the other tuners for? TVs only have one screen.
Some TVs do PIP, which could use multiple tuners.
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The message I replied to said two years ago!! Please see quote that I included with my message. May 2019 is not 2 years ago. So there is some tension on that point.
Many modern TVs have more than 1 tuner. Mine (living room) has 2 tuners. So it can do picture-in-picture. Not sure what that has to do with it though.
…and last year they provided a brief explanation why “this sort of problem” hasn’t been fixed. Doesn’t seem to be a time issue to sort out this type of problem.
You guys are really great! I do enjoy this message board, at least knowing that someone is listening and shares my concerns. Yes, dual tuners are placed on TVs due to picture-in-picture. DVRs are more prone to have 4 tuners. bbaorbb above talks about a similar report 2 years ago, regarding the issues we are discussing… VDRs that use MOCA all tend to have 4 tuners, because the recordings are transmitted from the central DVR to the satellite boxes. Yes I have also reduced most of the crashes by eliminating the channels with bad signal. But this is a workaround, not a fix, as the problem can happen again during rain fade events. The logic should be that the box should not fail at all due to a signal issue. It’s like having a calculator, and the manufacturer tell you that you can use all the digits, except for the number “4“. So that means that to multiply by 4, multiply by 2 twice. Any time you have to enter a 4, enter a 2 twice. Yeah, you might get fair results, but it doesn’t work as it should. God forbid that the 9 should fail on that calculator later on!
Well if the 9 fails you could then use 3 twice. But, the analogy fails because you know the 4 is always bad and you can find a substitute. In my case, I know ABC is going to fail sometimes and take down everyone else with it. I could eliminate ABC from my list and just give up ABC programming. Unfortunately, PBS and CBS also fail sometimes, also taking hostages. Should I eliminate them as well?
I considered getting several dual channel Tablos and carefully avoiding any one recording more than one channel at a time. If I could send all the recordings to the same drive, this wouldn’t be such a bad plan.
I can imagine reasons why this problem could be a difficult problem to resolve. I can’t imagine why frequent failure of The Basic Function (recording a program) can’t become a priority serious enough to overcome the difficulties.
My theory is that the problem is not related to the tuners since there is some mitigating actions related to bad signal on a single recording. It’s likely related to the way the are handling multiple recording threads, specially when one programming thread fails and the other thread is still OK. I don’t see it as a chipset problem, as mentioned previously. It does seem odd that it has been there for long. But you are correct, you can have failures on your signal with rain fade and the best signal does not solve the problem completely. The performance can be greatly improved, but can’t eliminate the problem completely.
I work in a Wi-Fi engineering group. We are interested in a technology called Linksys Aware that allows you to track movements of people and pets in the area of the Wi-Fi signal. So we installed Linksys Velop, a mesh antenna product that offers this technology. It was interesting to note that one of the steps in the installation process has a link where crashes can be automatically reported. That tells you that a product that is crashing should be a first priority in engineering.
