Trouble with live TV

I am having a variety of issues trying to watch live TV. Sometimes it just resets to the main menu while trying to watch live television . Other times I get an “Error Weak Signal”. My antenna signal is strong and my Wi-Fi signal strength is around 30 mps. Other Roku apps such as ESPN stream fine. This is very frustrating. The problem is not as bad when watching a recorded show. Can someone please help me?

How have you measured your antenna signal to say that it is “strong?”

I’m having the exact same problem. I have verified it’s not my antenna or Router. I have five Roku’s on five TVs. Three Roku 3s. One Roku 4 and one Roku Ultra. All are experiencing the problem Mjtrivett has described. The only way to reconnect to the Tablo is to reboot the Tablo and reboot each Roku. It occurs about every couple days. I’ve even swapped out the Tablo 4 with a new one but still have this nagging problem. It’s very frustrating and has been going on for weeks. All Roku’s are wired.

I have the antenna connected directly into another television. I have never lost signal while watching live TV from that television. So I assume this would mean my antenna signal is strong.

Also, I have multiple bars on the signal strength. Is there another way to quantify signal strength? Thanks!

In my experience, TV tuners perform better than DVR tuners (for whatever reason). The Tablo internally splits the signal for its tuners. Even though it amplifies the signal internally, a split nonetheless occurs. I would expect a TV to show stronger signal strength than a DVR (happens with my TVs and DVRs).

Never losing a signal on a TV does not meant the signal is “strong.” It means that the signal is adequate for the TV tuner to latch onto it and lock in the stream. Most TV tuners can do this with the signal strength being as low as 30%. However a 30% signal strength may not be adequate for a DVR.

I have a tuner card (Hauppauge) on my PC which tells me numerically how strong a signal is (eg. 26 db or 30 db). TVs typically show one to five bars. Does your TV have a signal strength screen?

Are your TV and Tablo both connected to the same antenna at the same time via a splitter?

Yes, a powered 8 port amplifier splitter hooked to a 13’ antenna. This system has been working perfect for a couple years and started having the issues with disconnecting, and “Error Weak Signal” for about 10 weeks now.

First of all, thank you for your thoughtful and detailed response.

I have the antenna’s coax cable being split. From there one coax goes to my tuner and the other to the Tablo

One more bit of information: if I am watching a recorded show on Tablo there doesn’t seem to be an issue. The troubles occur when streaming live TV.

Exactly same for me. All recordings are fine.

It’s a problem for me also. In the process of trying to locate the issue, I noticed that live tv worked when I disconnected the hard drive. But like you said, i could play recorded shows fine but getting player errors and reboots with live tv. Support asked me to put the Tablo into remote access Friday but I didn’t read me email until late. I’ll be doing that tonight before I go to bed.

I failed to mention that I had worked with Tablo support on this problem to no avail. When I first had the problem, with my original Tablo 4, they sincerely tried to help me resolve the issue. We were down to me putting the Tablo in maintenance mode for them to access it remotely. Sounds easy right. I tried this several times but could not synchronize the hookup with them. By the time I had the unit in maintenance mode and they were ready to access it, it timed out and went back to normal mode. Out of frustration I replaced the Tablo 4 and the hard drive at the same time. Everything worked OK for a few days and then boom it starting disconnecting from live TV again and the error messages began appearing every couple days. Like I said before, recordings are fine, and I just have to reboot the Tablo and Roku’s each time the glitch pops up. To me it’s either a firmware problem or my system is suffering from occasional Smurf or DDOS attacks which knock things out of kilter. My router logs do show plenty of 20 second attacks now and then. But I have not had to reboot my router to fix the problem.

One way of seeing if it is the Tablo that’s the cause of the problem is to use a different DVR to test the signal for a period of time. I have an inexpensive ($30) Mediasonic Homeworx 180 DVR that I can use in place of my Tablo whenever there are problems. At a different thread in this forum, a user was able to use a Homeworx with his antenna when the Tablo wouldn’t work on a specific channel. That narrowed the problem area down to the Tablo (which turned out to be a station PSIP error and not a signal strength issue).

I’ve problem watching live tv as well. In about an hour time into watching live, I either received an error message or the video would just freeze. If freeze, I just need to rewind a bit and it’ll continue. If received an error, I’ll need to restart the app. I feel that it’s more of the problem with the app then Tablo itself.

I have a similar issue but with the recent broadcast tower problems in the greater Boston area its hard to say now if its the Tablo or the temporary broadcasting measures they have taken causing my “weak signal” and live stream starting problems… one odd thing I noticed is if I delete some recordings (no my drive isnt full) it seems to start working again… odd dont know if its related or just coincidence …

@JimmyB7 @Mjtrivett Don’t hesitate to contact our support team directly. We could look at your Tablo from here and figure out what’s causing the behaviour. Whether it’s directly reception related, or something else.

I appreciate you are willing to work with me but been there, done that. First of all, it’s nearly impossible for me, 70 year old man to get the Tablo into maintenance mode. Second, if and when I do get it in maintenance mode, it returns to normal mode before support staff can look at it. Look at your records and you will see I’ve tried this route. Thanks but rebooting every couple days or even every day is easier for me.