Timeout waiting for video data

Support & Troubleshooting
1

I am having an issue during the day with channels from one of the towers. It is a slightly weaker signal, but with the preamp and amp I have, it shows up as 5 circles when I run a scan. I do not think this is an over amplification problem because my already strong signals from another tower are processed just fine by the Tablo, and when I don’t have the amplifier plugged in, I only get 3 circles of strength – so the amplification is needed. At night, I do not have this issue. I’m sure the sun is weakening the signal. If an airplane flys over nearby (close enough that I can hear it going over), I instantly experience this issue whether it is day or night.

The issue is that when I am watching the channels from this tower live, they poop out and I get an error. I have an eero mesh router. I am using a 4k firestick (I’ve tried two different 4k firesticks). I’ve tried two different hard drives (WD Elements and WD Elements SE).

If I use Tablo Preview, the error I get is “Timeout waiting for video data” with option to “Retry Playback”. When I click Retry, the channel comes right back. When I use the regular Tablo app, i get Playback Error “Your tuner has been reassigned or your device has temporarily lost connection with your tablo.”

I called Tablo support today and they did not seem confident in what this error message means. They emailed me later tonight and showed me that there is 0% packet loss, but they think that the mesh network is delaying things.

56 packets transmitted, 56 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 3.780/47.317/192.152 ms

That does not seem like much lag?

Any ideas from anyone here on what I can do to get the channel to stay on during the day? It’s annoying that the channel doesn’t automatically “retry” itself to stay on (if that’s the only solution).

2

I assume that’s from one of the Fire Sticks to the Tablo?

That’s a huge amount of jitter (change in ping time) for a local LAN. Something is definitely wrong with your Wifi network.

3

Yes, that is from the main Firestick that I use. I have no problems with anything else on my network – including any other app on the Firestick. I have unplugged one of the eero beacons that the Tablo and Firestick would sometimes connect through, but I won’t know if that makes a difference until tomorrow.

4

Update: I left the tv on thru the night and it was still on in the morning. The issue, however, reoccurred this morning multiple times starting around 1030am. I don’t get it…why only during the day? Regardless of if someone is home or not (excludes interference from cell phones or cars) since I live back in the woods.

5

I was watching the news this morning when I got the error “Timeout waiting for video data”. I pushed retry playback and it fired right back up. What does this error mean and has anyone seen this?

6

I have seen this too. It took a reboot of the tablo to get it to work.

7

Which app were you using when you saw this error?

8

I was watching live TV using the Preview app on a Fire TV.

9

Yep I have a thread on this exact topic and still have not gotten a resolution from Tablo. Timeout waiting for video data

10

I must of skipped over your post. Now that support see that there are a couple of us that have had this error, maybe you can get some more help on it.

11

How long as you watching Live TV? The poster in the other thread made it sound like they were leaving live TV playing for many hours straight.

12

For me, I was watching live for about a half an hour.

13

Is your Tablo connected to your router via a network switch? Or the Fire TV connected through a network switch? Sometimes having an off network setup can mess things up.

14

Maybe the preview app is slower then the OG app and after a while you get resource decay.

Here is a simple timing test that I’ve run:

You have a an OG 2-tuner that is idle.
It is wire connected to router.
WiFI 5G from router to TV.
TV has both Roku 3(4200) and gen 2 Fire TV stick. Roku 3 should be much slower.
One recording 480I recorded at 720p paused 1 hour 30 minutes.

Time from press Resume to start of recording playing:

Roku 3 - 10 seconds
Fire Tv Stick using OG app( wait for the sync to complete) - 10 seconds.
Fire TV Stick using Preview app - 14 seconds.

I wouldn’t have wasted my time timing this except when I ran the 1.7.4 preview app it appeared slower to my old eyes.

15

I have the issue whether I use the original Tablo app or Tablo Preview. The only thing that’s different is the error message that displays, but it occurs at the same time of the day in the same way.

16

So if it’s happening at the same time of day - whatever that actual time is - who or what might be waking up to either phone home or perform maintenance?

Tablo does it’s maintenance around 3 AM. Would the Fire TV be phoning home?

17

At the same time of day I get this issue, I can leave Philo or Netflix streaming through the same firestick with no issue, so it has to be something with the Tablo. Nothing else on my network experiences any issues. I wish Tablo support would offer a fix. They already remoted in but haven’t offered a solution.

18

I had much the same problem and when I went to Live channels my Guide took forever to update on the screen.
I also tried several Firesticks and complained to TABLO Support.
I had a old tv that had ROKU on it and noticed it was much faster on the screen update of the guide.
I purchased a ROKU EXPRESS Stick with WIFI remote and solve my problem.
Much faster then Firestick.

19

Still having this same issue. Its occuring at other times of the day as well now. I bought a brand new Nighthawk router and its still happening! I even get the error when I have the Tablo hard wired via Ethernet. The issues happen on multiple devices, whether I use Tablo or Tablo Preview, or the web app. I’m literally at wits end.

20

Leaning6, are you still having the issue or did you find a way to fix it? I bought a brand new router and even tried hard wiring and still having the issue.