Mine looks like it is loading that one channel and goes to max while “retrieving” – but then stops, not showing the broadcast
I just noticed this topic was the same as I’m having with my Roku TV. Only the ABC channel indicates it is loading but stops before it brings anything up. Also anything recorded from that channel will not load either. This seems to have happened also back in October. It gets all the other channels fine.
My 3 other Roku devices attached to tvs work for this channel. Could it be an update that occurred with the Roku TV on Oct 22 (that’s what mine shows)? Any more ideas of what could be done for this? Maybe a new topic that indicates Roku TV problems with one channel might help see if others are having the problem as well.
asauer and King, do you only experience the issue when recording at 1080 - 10 mbps, 720@60fps. I am ok at any of the other resolutions, but it always fails to work for my local ABC and FOX affiliates on that highest setting. My problem definitely started in late October. I recorded the World Series on Fox on Oct 24 and then tried to watch the game the next day. I couldn’t get it to play on either of the Insignia Roku TVs but it worked just fine on the other devices. A few days later I realized that ABC was having that problem as well. I notice that my local FOX and ABC channels broadcast on a max of 720p, but that was never an issue until late Oct. of this year, and even now I record at 10 mbps, 720@60fps and stream this just fine on all of my portable Rokus and my IOS devices.
I really hate that this is happening. I was about to settle in with Tablo for the long haul and I had been telling all of my friends and family how wonderful cutting the cord and going to Tablo has been. Now, I have to warn them that Tablo may not work if they have a Roku TV. I’m having to look into YouTubeTV and other options because I won’t accept a lower resolution/poorer quality picture than 1080/720fps when it used to work just fine. I really, really hate to do that since I love the Tablo concept. But, it has to work!
Harry
gerapetritis
I changed the Tablo resolution to HD 720 - 5 Mbps which allows the ABC channel to now load from my Roku TV (it was 1080 before). Thanks for pointing to this to make it work again.
Tablo support why is this just recently happening? I hadn’t had this problem for over a year from when I first bought my Roku TV until last October.
WiFi issues? Some things don’t stay constant. My best guess.
Here was the information I received from Tablo Support on 11/15/17:
"Since we started investigating this issue, we believe we’ve managed to find the root cause of the issue.
The two channels you’re having issues with (21.1 and 13.1) are the only channels broadcasted at 720p in your area.
Because these channels are broadcasted in 720, and you have the 10Mbps recording quality enabled, the Tablo is transcoding the video for these channels to 60FPS. This appears to be triggering a player failure in the Roku/Insignia branded televisions exhibiting the issue.
Unfortunately, this lands as a hardware of firmware failure on the television’s end, and we can’t pinpoint exactly where it’s failing. We’ve passed along this bug report to our contacts at Roku.
In terms of how to avoid the issue in the future, we recommend changing your Tablo’s recording quality to 8Mbps to avoid triggering the issue on the Roku TV."
So, the current status is that Tablo simply doesn’t work on some Roku TV hardware. Question for Tablo: Would it be possible to allow recording quality to be set at the highest level but have the Tablo cap the recording quality at the detected broadcast resolution? Or, to set different resolutions on different channels. Either of these options are better than accepting a lower resolution on ALL channels, or living with playback failures on some TVs.
Harry
I am really annoyed by this – and it would be a deal killer, except for the part I already paid a LOT for Tablo. Can’t recommend it with this problem though. I’m already unhappy it doesn’t do surround sound – and now I’m supposed to reduce to 720 because Tablo has a bug they blame on the TV hardware. Ridiculous.
You don’t have to reduce to 720p recording quality, choose the 1080p 8 Mbps recording quality and the 720p channels won’t be recorded in 60 fps. The 60 fps is only recorded when using the 1080p 10 Mbps setting. The issue described in this thread was for 720p 60 fps recordings.
Edumacate yourself - see link below.
https://www.tablotv.com/blog/choosing-right-tablo-recording-quality/
I second the notion to use 1080p 8 Mbps recording to get the best resolution possible given this problem. However, don’t fool yourself that 8 Mbps is “just as good” as the 10 Mbps version. Text crawls on screen will be “herky-jerky” and sports simply won’t look as good on the 8 Mbps setting.
Tablo could do more. If I owned the Tablo company, I’d have one of every model of Roku TV and every streaming device with a Tablo App. I’d test every version of the Tablo App across all platforms before I released it. If the software update broke the App on some platforms, I wouldn’t release it.
Tablo should come with a disclaimer “May not work properly on Roku TVs”, because it doesn’t and there is nothing the customer can do to fix this fault in the product, other than annoying workarounds. It’s kind of like having a car that you can’t drive over 35 mph. “Hey, don’t complain - at least it runs!”
And then, two weeks after you released your comprehensively tested product, Roku sends out an update that breaks your shiny new app. What do you tell your customers then? Because I believe this is the situation Tablo finds themselves in. They often have to retrofit fixes to resolve issues introduced by Roku (or other client platforms).
Will you also have one of every version of IOS, Android, Fire and whatnot? Any idea how expensive (both in hardware and human costs) that would be? It is my understanding Tablo has a decent cross-selection of equipment they test on - but you start doing the match of the possible combinations of settings, carriers, clients, reception levels, antennas, station glitches and you’ll soon realize that there is no possible way Tablo can test (or even attempt to test) everything.
Good points, Bardel. Perhaps there are just too many platforms to thoroughly test. My main complaint at this point is that the customers have provided the testing and feedback and Tablo still can’t fix it. These forums and Tablo customer support (initially) kept insisting that there must be a problem with the local customer setup/equipment. (“It’s your antenna, it’s your wifi, maybe it’s a fault in your tablo unit”). That was just not the case. Someone pushed an update around Oct. 21, 2017 that broke important functionality for Tablo users on Roku TVs. Tablo needs to fix it.
Thanks for the input,
Harry
Was the update push by Tablo to your Tablo unit or the Tablo app on your Roku TV?
Or was it Roku who pushed an update to the firmware on your Roku TV?
If it’s Roku and the firmware, it is not Tablo’s fault, but it will be fixed eventually. It is not their fault Roku likes to f*** everything up once a year.
Sure sounds like the Roku 8.0 OS feature. Roku wanted to finish the 8.0 update by the end of the year.
During this festive time of year, I got my update Dec. 16th. I’ve had the problem ever since. It also seems to affect SlingTV. If you are in a rush to clear the issue: Sometime you can back all the way out of the tablo app(disconnect) and reenter to correct the situation. Sometime just playing another recording works. Sometimes playing a different OTT app clears the problem.
Ho ho ho, it don’t get better than this
I’m not really sure; everything else works except Tablo. And, Tablo/Roku works fine on all of my mobile devices and Roku streaming devices, just not Roku TVs. I wish I knew how to see a log of what updated and when and I could precisely tell what it was. However, I still don’t understand why it can’t be fixed. A station broadcasting at 480i or 1080p gets recorded at 1080/720fps 10 mbps and streams just fine. But, a station broadcasting at 720p recorded at 1080/720fps won’t stream on any Roku TVs. This is a very specific problem that Tablo should be all over, and yet the response is a “we dunno” shoulder shrug.
“It will be fixed eventually.” Well, it’s two months and counting that it’s broken. My guide renewal is coming up. Tablo better hurry.
What firmware version are you running on your Tablo, mate? I’ve got the 2.2.16 which came out in July I think, and there hasn’t been another update since. So the October update must be from Roku which bodged up your Roku tv. This is typical of Roku, every second update breaks things that were working well.
By the by, I don’t understand all your numbers mate. Hdtv numbers confuse me on the best days, but one thing I know with certainty is that only 720p channels have 60 fps.
Thanks for the reply, John. I too am showing 2.2.16 as the latest Tablo firmware. I think the problem arose from a Tablo App update for Roku, not the Tablo firmware itself.
Yeah I have the same issue on my TCL Roku TV. It has since updated to Roku OS 8.0, and my Tablo firmware is: 2.2.17, support pushed it out to me to see if it would help with this issue. It is a bummer to have to lower the resolution in order to be able to watch certain channels/recordings on my Roku TV, when on all other devices, (Shield TV, iPhone) work perfectly. As I remember it, it was a Tablo App update that caused this, though the Roku TV updates automatically, so I can’t say if there was a Roku update as well or not, I just remember updating the Tablo app, and immediately this started. I believe it was the Tablo app update in preparation for the Roku OS 8.0 update that has caused this?
I can’t explain how I know (I have an agreement), but your assumptions are misguided. It was indeed a Roku update that broke the compatibility, as is evident by the fact that it came out when the 8.0 update hit most users. It is up to Roku to fix this, not Tablo. It is roku’s OS that broke it, and Tablo has their hands tied until roku fixes it, from what I can tell. I have personally reported the issue to Roku, while we all wait on them to fix it. They are aware of it, so hopefully it’s on their list. A big give away that it isn’t a Tablo issue is that it works fine on all your other devices, even other Roku players. Again, I can’t say exactly how I know what I know, but please continue trying to help, and stop blaming Tablo for something that A) isn’t their fault and B) they can’t really fix. We need to pressure Roku to fix what they broke instead. Send some emails, perhaps. I’m still working on it, on my end as well, because I’m just as annoyed as you all are.
Another thing I can say is that this is a PLAYBACK problem, not a recording problem, which is easily shown because those same recordings from the problem channels work on your other Tablo devices. That means the recordings are fine, but the playback on the TV is broken. I will also say that I’ve submitted my own error logs to both Tablo and Roku to check the problem out.
I would think it is in tablo’s best interest to work with roku to get this issue resolved, regardless of who is responsible for creating this bug. I am sure they have more influence that you or I.