In one case, the signal is so strong, that I have trouble not receiving it when I connect my TV to rabbit ears. So when it says “Recording failed due to weak signal” when that signal is received on an outdoor antenna w/a pre-amp, that dog won’t hunt. In other cases, the signal is almost never too weak. Watching TV on those channels usually comes down to a total of 2 seconds of slight pixelation over 60 minutes (gotta love digital!), so it’s a little too easy to say it’s a weak signal.
I’ve had my Dual LITE for less than a week now, so 4 cases of this is way too many.
Tablo will report failed for weak signal when in fact, the signal is TOO STRONG. Tablo is not very tolerant of signals that are too hot. Try an attenuator ahead of the Tablo and see what happens.
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Signal strength is not signal quality or sound to noise ratios. Hooking a coax into TV tuner doesn’t account for signal loss due to splitters,etc.
Two seconds of pixelation on a direct connect probably means your at the edge of signal loss when placed through a splitter. And signals are not consistent everyday or even over a 24 hour period.
But you can always take your dog to advanced training.
I’ve been using this equipment for 5 years now (antenna, coax, splitters, etc.) I know what their limitations are as well as those of the transmitters. There may be some truth that signal loss sometimes approaches the edge and rfi could account for some problems too. However, the bottom line is, if my 10+ year old TV can show a channel at most any time of day with perfect or near perfect performance during the whole hour-long program with such consistency, I would expect the same from the Tablo.
The possibility that the Tablo doesn’t like the signal being too strong is plausible; there’s even an explanation as to why it more often fails with the weaker signal than it does on the stronger signal. But that’s unfalsifiable since I don’t have an attenuator and I won’t go out to get one just to prove that I need to return the Tablo.
Something else that comes to mind is the possibility that the error message is wrong. It wouldn’t surprise me if, say, it was a bad hdd write. In fact, https://support.tablotv.com/hc/en-us/articles/212409023-Troubleshooting-Failed-Recordings hints that a problem w/the hdd might just be the problem, the error message notwithstanding! Unfortunately, I don’t know how to confirm.
I can connect the coax to any of my TV’s and watch any of my channels any hour of the day for hours on end and never have any pixelation.
Of course I also use the TV’s signal meter and the hdhomerun signal meter to monitor reception. Many transmitters and towers were swapped out during repack so I would expect the average user hasn’t had the time to visit the FCC site to digest the various new contour maps.