Just get a $10 laptop cooler from Amazon and it will cool fine. Mine has been running on one for over 5 yrs and still going strong.
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Thanks to @zippy , @PhxCliff, @Rob_G and @sodaman_2000 - I appreciate the help. I will try the cooling idea as that make sense and the errors and issues I saw were not consistent which matches with a heat problem. I will advise if the problem went away…
Well, it did not seem to work about the heat issue. I opened up the case and placed a small fan blowing on the unit. The bottom of the Tablo was cool to the touch but a recording done last night for the 10 o’clock news on TMJ4 was choppy and skipped some sections along with pixelization. I also noticed it said it was unable to do commercial skip due to a poor signal.
Was there a specific area I needed to keep cool?
Any other ideas?
The other thing to consider is if you are having hard drive issues. I had a disk go bad and it caused pixelation and short (not necessarily partial) recordings. Try to record 4 shows at once and stream to several TVs at the same time. Does the problem get worse?
I didn’t read the entire post admittedly, but have you tried a new/different power brick? Could be power supply ripple/noise.
@bbaorbb, thanks for checking in! The jury is still out but I have found that one channel seems to record fine while another had issues. This may be due to the impending rescan/channel change upcoming.
I swapped the HDD for another and that seemed to help. Did not try the power supply but I did notice that Tablo sells them at their site which is a clue. I have another 12V supply I might try.
I am slowly rebuilding my record list after I factory reset the Tablo for the new HDD. Not sure how to do it some other way but nothing I had recorded was too important to save.
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I can’t speak on the older models, however the Quad with an internal hard drive draws around 11-13 watts or roughly 0.9 - 1.1 amps at 12 volts. I’ve run it all the way down to 9 volts, it just draws more current to satisfy it’s wattage needs. Just don’t go over 12 volts, anything 12 volts around 1.5 amps or above should be fine. Positive tip.
I’ll assume the older models draw a little less current, which translates into less wattage.
@Codebest and others. I have had better success with another HDD attached to the Tablo. I now see the thumbnails after a recording is done and processed and some stations now record the entire show. I still have some issues but I believe them to be reception based as I moved my antenna around a lot to debug and now it is in a less than desirable place.
I did not try the power supply tip yet. I am still convinced it has something to do with the hardware/firmware for this model. I still get multiple episodes of show saved over the limit I set so that part is not working but that is minor.
Umm, if it were me I would try that power supply. Unclean power from bad capacitors, etc. in the power brick is like the equivalent of making your Tablo drunk. Can I promise that’s what the problem is, no…but even having better luck with another hard drive can be power supply related.
Resolved (I think)!
Folks, my issues seem to have gone away after a hard drive change out. I tested the Seagate drive I had and it failed the full tests with the Seatools utility. I also moved the config back to the original site and set-up and it seems to be recording without issue.
Thanks to all who responded and gave me good ideas to try. Thanks to @bbaorbb for the HDD tip.
Also, thanks to Tablo support for their help although I do agree with another person who said they seem to error on the side of software or reception as the issue.
In summary, if you are having issues with short recordings or pixelization during the recording try these tips-
- Try rescanning to see if reception is the issue.
- Try a new hard drive.
- Try a new power supply.
- Make sure the Tablo is as cool as possible (I have mine elevated on two foam runners for air flow underneath.
- Contact Tablo support as they can access the unit remotely and look for issues in the log files.
Thanks again to Tablo Nation!
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Moral of the story, don’t buy Seagate consumer level hard drives.
Yeah. I actually had a couple of HDDs laying around from old laptops and bought a case for one, a Hitachi 250GB. Used it to start with the Tablo but bought a Seagate to expand to 1TB. This one was on the list from Tablo as a good drive to use. Any recommendations from @Codebest for a drive to buy for the future?
Personally I would go with WD or HGST (Hitachi). I’m currently using a Toshiba 1TB which came new out of a PS4 Pro. If it’s good enough for Sony it’s good enough for a Tablo. I’ve just had far too many Seagate consumer drives fail. Now enterprise wise Seagate is a bit better. HGST is my fav however for enterprise stuff.
I like HGST (post IBM Deathstar) as well, however it’s becoming more of a mixed bag with the WD acquisition. Harder to tell with HGST are HGST and which are strictly HGST (fab) and which are just in name only.
poohdog, You might want to rescan again today. They did the repack this morning. We had a lot of trouble with pixilation, especially CBS 58, when they went to low power in preparation for the changes. We live south of Mitchel Field. This morning after the rescan everything is great. Looking forward to getting clean recordings of our Friday night shows.
@DocBrown, thanks for the suggestion but I already did that today as a couple of Milwaukee stations changed frequencies. CBS 58 was not one of the stations I was trying to record so I did not notice that change. Hope the signals are better for Racine as well…