Unbelievable Buffering with Fire TV Stick

When you’re in your Naples Florida location, have you tried remote streaming on an smartphone or tablet at 1 Mbps? Does that work?

Streaming to my iPAD may work a little bit better, but it is still a problem.

Bottom line is that streaming to my Fire TV stick needs to work 100%. I have absolutely no problem streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime.

I suspect that the Tablo implementation is susceptible to buffer bloat issues. They need to fix this to have a viable product. If not, I’m going to get rid of my Tablos. This has been going on long enough. They need to get their act together.

For those of us who don’t know what buffer bloat is, I’m assuming it’s:

Or the article suggestion:

For most end-users, the largest improvement can be had by fixing their home router

In my case, the buffer bloat at my Naples FL house has nothing to do with my router. I connected my laptop directly to my Comcast Cable Modem, and I see exactly the same buffer bloat problem as when I am connected via my wifi router.

In my MN house, where I also have Comcast service, I don’t see any significant buffer bloat. The problem in FL appears to be inside Comcast’s network down here.

The bottom line is that Tablo does not appear to have sufficient buffering in the Tablo client to handle this. The other streaming apps I have on my Fire TV stick (Netflix, Amazon Prime, PBS, etc.) don’t have this problem.

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Are you describing a bufferbloat condition that’s discussed in the WiKi page?

Or is your use of the term bufferbloat kind of a made up technical term? Users who think they may have this condition might want to read up on it.

I don’t know a lot about bufferbloat. All I know is that when I run the Speed Test in dslreports.com, my internet connection in Naples FL, shows a big buffer bloat problem. In St. Paul, MN, I don’t have that issue.

I have no idea what is causing the problem, as I have Comcast at both locations. It’s definitely not in my home network, as I see the problem when my laptop is directly connected to the Comcast modem.

When I am using Tablo remote connect in Naples to watch Live TV, I get so much buffering, that it is virtually unwatchable. I don’t have that problem in St. Paul. Note however, that I don’t seem to have the buffering problem in Naples when I am matching a recorded program on my Tablo. The problem seems to be limited to Live TV.

So then isn’t the issue your ISP in Florida? Not the actual Tablo itself?

I just got done watching a recorded show using the Fire TV app from my Naples FL house using remote connect. In over two hours, I didn’t have any buffering issues.

As soon as the show was over, I tried watching Live TV on the Fire TV. I immediately got buffering every 30 seconds. I am now trying to watch the same Live TV program on my iPAD. It took about 1 minute for the Live TV to start on the iPAD. It then ran fine for a couple of minutes and I then had a buffering event, which recurred every couple of minutes. It seems that the iPAD app works better with Live TV using remote connect than the Fire TV app, but it’s still not functional with quality of my Naples internet service.

Bottom line is that Tablo has some serious issues with Live TV remote connections over internet connections that have significant buffer bloat. It is VERY frustrating that no one at Tablo seems to care about fixing this stuff.

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Again I will point out that if it works properly at another remote location and not this one, then the upload speed at the local Tablo location should be ok, and the Tablo device does function properly.

The problem you’re having sounds ISP related rather than Tablo related. Open a Support Ticket directly with Tablo Support for them to try to help you directly.

I have Comcast coming out this week to check out my service. There’s no question that something is wrong. However, Tablo should be able to handle these kind of issues with Live TV streaming if it works while watching a recorded program, as well as with other streaming apps over the same connection.

I mostly use my Tablo remotely and the internet upload speed where the Tablo is located is 10 Mbps. And I still experience buffering issues with the Remote Streaming Quality at “Full Quality”. As well the buffering issues happen more with Live TV than with Recordings - who knows why. This can happen at many different remote locations with no real explanation. So the fact your upload speed is 4 Mbps where the Tablo is could also be an issue.

Also in your Tablo settings, is your “Recording Quality” and “Live TV Quality” set to the same? There are 2 different quality settings for recordings and live TV.

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It may be worth trying lowering your remote streaming quality further on - even just temporarily for a few live TV tests. The results should provide some insight if this is a throughput issue.

I have reduced the remote connect speed setting to 1MB without any improvement. This is NOT a throughput issue. I can watch other streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, PBS, CBS News, etc.) without any issues. This is a Tablo issue on why Live TV is so sensitive to Internet quality issues.

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I have 100/100 at my tablo location and 100/5 at my streaming location. Everything else streams fine, it’s just tablo connect on my fire TV stick that buffers a lot

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Sounds like you and I have the exact same issue Mike. I too can watch recorded TV with no problem, however, as soon as I try to watch live TV on my fire stick it just buffers every minute or so.

No buffering on anything else that I stream except tablo live TV.

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After submitting a support ticket, Tablo suggested that I roll back the Tablo box firmware to the last release. This afternoon I rolled back from Ver 2.2.26 to version 2.2.24. Totally solved all of my Live TV buffering problems. I have been remotely watching Live TV via Tablo Connect for almost 4 hours now with absolutely NO buffering!!!

I have been watching Live TV over Tablo Connect with Tablo release 2.2.24 for over 3 months now with ZERO buffering problems. This evening, I upgraded by Tablo box to 2.2.28. Now I have the same buffering problem I had with 2.2.26. TOTALLY unusable. WARNING!!! DO NOT upgrade to 2.2.28 (or 2.2.26) if you want Live TV to work reliably over Tablo Connect.

There are plenty of us running 2.2.28 with no issue, in fact some of us helped test it.

If you read this thread from the beginning, you will see that this problem really only manifests itself if you have internet service with excessive buffer bloat, which is the case with my Comcast service in SW FL. I don’t have this problem at my home in MN. Release 2.2.24 works fine with excessive buffer bloat connections. 2.2.26 and 2.2.28 can’t handle these conditions.

I was speaking more to the comment above. I HAVE followed this thread since you first created it last June. The statement above is true in your very specific situation, which is a provider that has buffer bloat issues, but for general users there really isn’t a reason for them to NOT upgrade to 2.2.28 so that overall comment is a bit misleading if a new user is looking through these threads.