We just got our Tablo hoping to replace our Homeworx. It’s the 2 tuner Tablol. Anyways we wanted a smarter DVR for my wife.
I’m only getting 8 channels when I scan. On the Homeworx we have 40 channels. I even moved the antenna cable from our TV over and the result is the same. On the TV we get closer to 50 channels. Our antenna (AmazonBasics) is external and mounted in a place where we received the most channels already.
Any thoughts on what may be going on? I know the tuner is only one aspect that affects signal reception but I did not expect that kind of difference.
When I got the Homeworx 180, I was surprised how good its tuner is! The Tablo, having multiple tuners internally, splits the incoming signal whereas the Homeworx has only one tuner that gets the entire signal.
If the signal is weakened when it gets into the Tablo, you could try inserting a preamp in front of the Tablo to boost the signal up a little. An inexpensive preamp such as the RCA TVPRAMP1Z ($20) could help.
Hey man, what’s with this $20 mania you have? First in another thread its $29, now here its $20. These are not poor people at this forum - very high class here!
Try connecting the Mohu amp (is it the Jolt?) between the antenna and the splitter. The amp should work with any antenna. Is your AmazonBasics antenna the amped or non-amped version?
The AmazonBasics is amped. I will have to wait for my wife to get a work break before I plug in the amp, but we will do that to test further.
Considering the fact I have a Roku on one TV and a FireStick on the other TV. I should be able to remove the splitters and we can watch the OTA channels via the Tablo app.
Yup but don’t do a lot of channel hopping because the Tablo is slow at switching channels (which can be frustrating).
If the AmazonBasics is already amped, no need to insert the Mohu amp, just remove the splitter. BTW why did you move from the Mohu to the AmazonBasics antenna?
When we moved a bit further from Atlanta a year ago, we lost a lot of channels. We had to go to an external antenna to get anything close to what we had before the move. Because of the move, our budget limited what we could get as an external antenna. From what I read the Amazon model was basically a generic Mohu.
I’m 33 miles from the broadcast towers in a hole which makes reception very difficult. Had to install an antenna in the attic. However a friend who lives in Dawsonville (45 miles away from the towers, 12 miles further out than me), with Lake Lanier in front of him, gets all the Atlanta channels easily with just rabbit ears. Those signals just fly across the lake without any impedence.
At least we’re lucky in that all the channels are in one direction (with the exception of ION which I don’t get for the time being).
After going with the external antenna here, we get most everything we got in Roswell, save for the 47.1. etc. channels and PBS. I miss my RetroTV. Channels 2 and 36 seem to be hit or miss for us depending on which way the wind blows it seems.
Tablo sucks and i will be going to buy Tivo in the near future. All these stupid excuses by the company but i still havent gotten fox channel in months. My antenna works fine not connected to Tablo. There system is just a piece of crap. Always just stopping for no reason then have to go back in and hit watch to look at the channel again. Im done with the excuses.
That’s strange that you don’t get either PBS. Channel 8 (WGTV trio) is VHF so I needed to get a VHF antenna. The specs on the AmazonBasics say it is capable of VHF as well as UHF. And it is multi-directional (channel 8 is about 20 degrees away from all the other channels) so you wouldn’t have to repoint the antenna.
It appears that from Woodstock (using TVFool charts) you would need the antenna at least in the attic (per TVFool’s analysis of your location) or on the roof to get WGTV. You are about 25 miles from the broadcast towers (150 degrees) for all the channels except PBS (which is 30 miles away from you at 130 degrees). So the antenna in the attic should get you PBS and probably RetroTV (WANN 32.7) which is also 30 miles away.
My guess is that those channels that come in and go out from time to time would be more stable with the antenna in the attic or on the roof. The AmazonBasics is rated for 60 miles (and is amped) so it should do fine in the attic. I would point its face at 140 degrees (midpoint between PBS and all the other channels).
The TVFool analysis indicates that you could be receiving the same amount of channels you did in Roswell with an attic antenna. In Roswell the antenna at the living room level would get all those channels (hence the Mohu working well there).
A tip to strengthen the antenna’s reception in the attic (since in our case we don’t need omnidirectional antennas): get a piece of cardboard (about 30% larger than the antenna), tape it over with simple kitchen aluminum foil and stick it 5 inches behind the antenna (on the side not facing the broadcast towers). That will inexpensively get you another 15% in signal strength using such a reflector - enough to boost up the strength of any marginal stations.
The AmazonBasics is mounted just under the roof. I have the antenna on the southeast corner of the house, though there is a lot of trees and the like as well back there. It’s a two story house so it’s probably 25 foot up. Behind the house is a train that runs regularly so the trees act a bit as a buffer for when it runs through.
Occasionally I do get channel 18 (PBS) here, but we rarely watch it.
