Right out of the box, the gen 4 is more trouble than it is worth. I spent 2 hours trying to get it to work. Installed and unistalled apps on my phone and Ruko several times to make it work for a short time, and it crashed again. It had trouble connecting to my devises. Tried to watch a program, and it kept buffering. Total waste of time and money. Thankfully, I bought it from Amazon, and they accept returns. DO NOT BUY!
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Not an owner, just an observer, and so… this is a wild guess. I think there quality problems. Why? Because it seems very hit or miss, and has zero to do with Roku, etc. whether you will have a great experience with the new units or a bad one.
Now, I could be wrong. But seems to me like some purchased units are “bad” out of the gate.
I’m sorry you’re having such a rough time. Have you contacted Tablo Support through their online form or a phone call?
This forum is a great place to reach out to other users who are very willing to help. @TabloTV is here about 5 days a week and if there’s something specific going on that users can’t help with, or if your Tablo is defective, they’re usually very willing to see what they can do.
However, some have struggled with getting the device up and running. A few tweaks here or there and a real look into your network/setup are usually all it takes to get things going.
Again, I understand your frustration and am sorry to hear that you’re not enjoying your device. Good luck!
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Sorry you are having problems but Tablo is not trash. Is it perfect? No. Does it get better with each update? Yes. And WELL worth the $79 I spent on it. I have found the Tablo Team to be much more responsive than many other tech companies that take your money and run.
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@Royce_Meier Sorry to hear you had difficulty with setup.
In the early morning hours we did have planned maintenance that would have prevented the setup of new accounts and Tablo devices:
You can try again now.
If you attempted setup at a different time support would be happy to walk you through the steps and get you up and running: www.tablotv.com/support
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I’m not criticizing, I’m trying to be helpful with the little information we have about your setup. How is your Tablo connected to your router? Is it through wifi or an ethernet cable? Personally, I feel that a wifi connection should be limited to a very good wifi network or close to the router.
It’s possible you have a unit that is defective. With the buffering, that leads me to believe it’s your wifi network. My understanding of the 4th generation is unlike past Tablo models, the new Tablo 4th Gen will not transcode video while watching live TV and, instead, stream the native MPEG-2 video. This means that the live video quality from the Tablo 4th Gen should be the same as the quality you would see if you connected your antenna directly to your TV. This does, of course, mean that both the WiFi connection to the Tablo and the WiFi connection to your streaming device are solid with enough speed to handle the full-quality MPEG-2 broadcast. The HDHomeRun as an example doesn’t transcode and thus requires an ethernet connection. Doing some speed testing at your streaming device would be a start.
I have read about similar issues with other people’s setups. In fact a few people have returned and exchanged multiple devices and have the same recurring issues. I install antennas on the side. There is technical knowhow that’s involved with that, but it’s different than a few decades ago where you ran a cable to the TV and called it a day. This year I installed 4 antennas and my customers chose Tablo over the HDHomeRun because they didn’t either want to deal with a server or having the knowledge to use one. My personal recommendation is to use a quality mesh network. One person has a smaller home and chose to use the router from Spectrum. In her case I wasn’t that concerned because her internet access point was close to her only TV and the Tablo was connected by an ethernet cable. I have not had one complaint outside of minor device bugs. I hope you can figure out what is happening. The device is fantastic. I retired my Legacy unit. The picture is better, the guide is 10X better and the 4th generation is much faster because of the transcoding improvement.
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Keep it real dude… sorry you had issues. But you were probably not techie enough to get it up and running. You need some skills and fortitude to make it work. It’s not 100% plug and play.
The forum users could have help or even Tablo Support…
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I couldn’t agree more! It’s plain old garbage. I have tried to use it for 6 months now and it just gets WORSE and WORSE!
You could have asked for help?
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What Help? My Tablo had the same problems and eventually went out after a power outage. Starting from scratch to set up and now it says, no account and then account already exists. Thee scan code wont even read. Never had good reception, would record a show for 2 minutes and stop. while I sat and watched the whole show with no buffering. No customer service. wont record shows outside of tablo channels such as Freevee . I want a simple VCR back, hit record and walk away.
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Well up until the latest software updates I was frustrated too. I have recorded the Olympics on NBC and everything I recorded and viewed was perfect. I recorded many hours and so far not one blip. Great picture quality too! Who needs 1080p when 1080i can show hair strands with enough detail!
Ha… uh ok bruh. it never said it can record FreeVee or anything outside of the Tablo itself. It never said it had VCR like quality’s where it records everything on GoDs green earth. So go take a seat and chill dude.
Bad reception? Not all tuners are built the same. Some are more senstive then others.
But with your comment above FreeVee and VCR’s, I ain’t even gonna try. So good luck with your venture bro!
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Hate to break it to you… I’ve recorded the olypmics with out a blip… well besides 2 days, Tropical Storm rolled through.
I should complain like everyone in this forums about how it should haved worked during a tropical storm, since Tablo has magically advertised that it should working during a nuclear blast.
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Help here… on the forum.
If you’re gonna complain, that’s one thing… but if you’d like anyone to help you with your issues and try to find out what’s going on, just try asking!
No one on here has any idea what’s going on with your setup until you can take a little time to break it down piece by piece. There are thousands of Tablo 4th gen users and many of us have worked through the issues to find a solution that works for us. A lot of it is fine tuning your reception and your internet (your download speed doesn’t mean crap, there are other internal factors that need tweaked).
You’ll never be able to record anything outside of the FAST channels that Tablo supports, and as @KimchiGUN has mentioned, it’s never said it would do anything similar!
Once you get your network and signal figured out, this is exactly what it will do.
All in all, we have zero idea what’s going on with your device because you’ve provided zero information. If you’re still interested in the how the community can help… ASK. But be prepared to follow steps exactly as described and in the order users will offer. And if you’re ready for that help, we’ll need to know a LOT more about your setup. Ball’s in your court…
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I have owned tablos since 2015. Currently using 4tuner which has been pretty rock solid and I have had no issues. Recently got an offer to purchase gen 4 for $40 off. I thought I would get one just to see where things were going with the product. When I went to set up the gen 4 (intending to let it run parallel with my “Legacy” 4 tuner. I use several roku devices as my streamers. First issue I encountered was that the Gen 4 tuner would show up in my menu on the Tablo app but would an return “Access denied” when I tried to get to the tuner. After running through the usual problem solving steps I threw up my hands and contacted tech support. That got me the same suggestions that I had already tried and failed. Ultimately I am pretty certain that the real problem was that I was not aware that there are now 2 apps. One for Legacy and the other for Gen4. Nowhere in the documentation did I encounter this information. What is worse, tech support did not even suggest this either.
I returned the Gen 4 mostly because at this point I was a bit nonplussed that this could occur. I have always been very happy with Tablo devices and found tech support helpful in prior contacts with them. I am a bit skeptical going forward.
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I love guys like you. I try to buy refurbished equipment from frustrated users who gave up on something. Nearly always nothing wrong with it. Thanks.
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