Could have added to the various 2.2.2 threads, but didn’t want to obscure my mea culpa. I tried switching a wifi Roku to wired at a remote location, which went through an extra couple of switches, and it still had the Loading issue. But I really wanted to see the Cowboy game, and found that if I recorded at Standard resolution the Loading issue was nearly cleared up on the Roku in the same room as the Tablo (wired)… So that did imply data rate as an underlying cause. So I dug up an old switch and put the Roku on my plasma tv on CAT5, and the Tablo and Roku are connected to the same switch. Not an IT guy, but my understanding is that a smart switch will go around the router and ship data directly between two devices on it. Or maybe not. But any way, recording at 1080p it is flawless. FLAWLESS!! I can’t make it fail. Same for Live TV.
So to all recipients of my snippy postings, my humble apologies. New 1080p is perfect, as are all of my older recordings. I don’t even need to downgrade to 720p. So, feel free to leave smart-ass responses here, because I got 'em coming.
Thanks for sharing. The fact you were having issues on 720p and 1080p made me think it was a networking issue.
However, with the new 1080p recording quality, how many channels do you have that broadcast in 720p 60 fps? I am wondering if any of these channels are causing problems on your Roku like they are for some with the new 60 fps video.
User, I don’t know, or maybe pay attention, to the technology being broadcast. All I have observed is that I reset the recording quality to 1080 and now all is well with that Roku 3. I would appreciate one of the techies in the crowd commenting on if the data takes a short cut for two devices on a common switch, rather than router and back. If so, that might explain why working now but did not when I just tried a really long CAT5 from the router a few days earlier.
Long Cat-5E cables on Tablos and Rokus for reasons yet to be determined appear to sometimes create very bad problems for some users. Switching to short cables dramatically reduced another type of Tablo / Roku problem I have been dealing with (rebooting when fast forwarding).
My experimentation taught me that the Tablo to router cable length was the problem, and a 70 foot run, well within Ethernet and 100Base-T specs, caused both increasing delays in button responses and reboots. One could postulate that greater error rates and thus packet re-tries are causing both loading delays and timing races (Heisenbugs) provoking reboots.
Something as simple as a weak Ethernet transceiver or faulty RJ-45 socket on the Tablo or Roku could make a longer cable act badly whereas a short cable would work without problems.
Well, this is worrisome. I recently bought a 100 foot Cat5e that I plan to run from the router in the basement to the Roku on the main floor. Hopefully, I’m one of the unaffected users.
I have 6 installed Roku 3’s, several on long CAT-5E cables, and the remainder on comparatively short cables. All behave similarly. The real issue is the Tablo to router cable. Two feet works much better than 70 foot did, when comparing fast forward reboot frequency.
Ah, got it. My Tablo is sitting mere inches away from my Nighthawk router, actually… Maybe I should look for an even shorter cable Incidentally, I haven’t been plagued that much by Roku reboots (I’ve had just as many non-Tablo related reboots, even when entering my Wi-Fi password…)
The Roku / Tablo performance for many if not most users seems to be fine, and yet some of us are not so lucky. Could be production variations in Roku boxes, Tablo boxes, firmware, also contingent upon networking and configurations. It is most noteworthy that nobody had any issue / problem / complaint on the fast forward rebooting until firmware was updated, so it makes configuration and hardware variations much less suspect as the root cause. But anything is possible…
So I am thinking that this idea is worth pursuing for my installation (4 tuner Tablo and three Roku 3 boxes, all ethernet wired). Do you have any suggestions on which “smart” switch to use, or is pretty much any modern switch a “smart” switch (that will recognize MAC addresses of attached devices and ship traffic directly across the switch, bypassing the wireless router)?
Pretty much any “switch” as opposed to a “hub” should do layer 2 forwarding. In fact, it is actually simpler with the less expensive and less capable switches. Some of the managed switches can be a little complex in the configs.
ddd671 - Thanks for the reply, I bought a “D-Link 16-Port Gigabit Switch (DGS-1016A)” from Amazon, only $70, so it has no “managed” features whatsoever. Hopefully this will work and I will see if this experiment helps with the “loading . . . please wait” issue. The goal here is to use 1080 recording (and 720-60fps when applicable) for all of my recordings.
Even if it doesn’t work, my old network gear could really use some updating. My old switch has to be at least a couple of generations old. Kind of embarrassing for a tech geek . . .
Retired Engineer: My Tablo is about 25’ of CAT5 from my router. The router is in a cabinet with the coax coming in for Comcast (hisssssss) broadband. If I put a splitter at the router / cable modem, one side for Tablo, the other side for the cable modem, will I degrade my internet speed? I currently get about 120Mbps, which is way more than I need, but I do a lot of file downloads, so if I dropped dramatically that would not be a good thing. I have some good quality Channel Master splitters. If I do this, I could also fiddle with the setup and have the switch in the cabinet too so the Tablo and Roku are on a common switch, the Roku then being at the end of the original 25’ CAT5 run.
A smart switch would be defined as one that you can login into. I use a cisco sg200 08p, which is a half PoE switch. Yes managed switches can stop traffic collisions that can happen on busy “dumb” switches.
As far as the length of the cable do not use anything less than Cat5e Or Cat6. With these cables you should get 300’ max before you start to get drop out and you need to include patch panels, so this length is device to switch. Otherwise you might have a defective cable, but I imagine most problems are caused by poorly designed network switches that are unmanaged.
Just my 2cents and for what is worth I am a network engineer irl.
Mike,
The antenna input on your Tablo is designed for over the air HDTV television signals, typically delivered by an antenna and not a cable company. Are you expecting to split your Comcast coax and taking one of the splitter outputs as your TV source? I highly doubt your cable company rebroadcasts these over the air signals on your cable unaltered. The Tablo is not, AFAIK, designed for cable TV signallling at its RF coax input.
Splitting the Comcast (MoCA) coax should not alter your 120 Mbit/sec broadband speed. A typical 3-5 dB loss at the additional splitter is insignificant to your cable modem’s coax input given the digital signalling method and typical margin of surplus power delivered at the customer’s tap. The need to split the Comcast coax should only be for driving Comcast set-top boxes or possibly old analog TVs if Comcast still carries old analog channels.
Incidentally, I haven’t been plagued that much by Roku reboots (I’ve had just as many non-Tablo related reboots, even when entering my Wi-Fi password…)