The Tablo

[rvvaquero]

In my quest to learn about all things TV, I've got my DISH Wally and I bought a Tivo a few weeks back and more recently I bought a new Tablo Dual Lite. It's the Tablo I want to talk about here.

Setup of the Tablo was fairly easy, got it up and running in about 30 minutes. I'm using a sata external drive adapter with an SSD drive. Router is an Asus AC1900. Tuner on the Tablo is about equal to the Air TV tuner on my Wally as far as bringing in stations.

I've accessed the Tablo on my Win10 PC, android 8.1 phone, Firestick, Kindle Fire, and Sony Android TV. They all locate the Tablo and can access the guide and menu and so forth. I'm able to watch live TV on each device and set up recordings and watch recordings. Firestick seems to have the best interface for Tablo.

Having problems with the live tv dvr functions. I can pause and resume okay. However, if I forward or rewind, it won't go to those spots. It just pauses, then I hit play again but it just continues from the present location to play. Now, if I bump the FF button, the time will advance 20 seconds (30 on a couple of the devices) and it shows the time advancing, but it doesn't go to that location and start playing. It just sits there. Hitting play will start it up again, but in the previous spot, not in the advanced location. Same with rewind. This is only in the live TV mode. When viewing a recording, rewind and FF work just fine.

I couldn't find any reference to this problem in the Tablo support arena..........and their forum was no help either.

Anybody have a Tablo and some experience? Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Bruce]

I have a Tablo Quad since Aug/2019 but never have any issues, been one of the best purchases I have ever made regarding Television programming.

 

[rvvaquero]

I have a Tablo Quad since Aug/2019 but never have any issues, been one of the best purchases I have ever made regarding Television programming.

Thanks for responding. So, when you're watching live TV and hit the FF or Rewind buttons, it goes to those points and starts playing at that time spot? Mine just pauses. Any ideas why mine doesn't act right? It's not depending on the internet to do any of this, is it? My internet speed max is about 20mbs. It seems like it would just use the hard drive to pause and resume, FF, back up etc.

 

[Bruce]

Thanks for responding. So, when you're watching live TV and hit the FF or Rewind buttons, it goes to those points and starts playing at that time spot? Mine just pauses. Any ideas why mine doesn't act right? It's not depending on the internet to do any of this, is it? My internet speed max is about 20mbs. It seems like it would just use the hard drive to pause and resume, FF, back up etc.

Are you watching something that is set to record while watching Live TV, if you are just watching Live TV you cannot REW or FF unless the show is set to record.

 

[rvvaquero]

Are you watching something that is set to record while watching Live TV, if you are just watching Live TV you cannot REW or FF unless the show is set to record.

I'm watching live TV. I pause for 2 minutes to take a leak. Shouldn't I be able to FF or rewind 30 or 40 seconds?

 

[Bruce]

I'm watching live TV. I pause for 2 minutes to take a leak. Shouldn't I be able to FF or rewind 30 or 40 seconds?

Nope, it does not work that way, it only records when it is set to record, say if, for example, you are watching Young Sheldon, if set to record then you can pause, Rewind, FF.




Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys

 

[solarvic]

Did you check the signal strength of your firestick? The tablo was giving me problems with the kitchen tv. Checked the signal and was getting fair some times and good some times. Was running wifi on 5 and my roku stick in living room worked perfect. I had to change the wifi to 2.5 to get the firestick stick to operate the tablo correctly. Think I would like to get a stronger signal to kitchen so I can use wifi 5 on the amazon stick. Havn,t decided which way to transmit a stronger signal to kitchen and living room. I have decided I like roku better than firestick. Also i have 2 tablo players which works perfect together.

 

[rvvaquero]

Nope, it does not work that way, it only records when it is set to record, say if, for example, you are watching Young Sheldon, if set to record then you can pause, Rewind, FF.

Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys

You never pause live TV with your Tablo? If you do, then it's recording. You're mistaken.

I've got it working now, resolution was set too high. Now, I can pause and walk away from the live TV program for a few minutes, then come back and resume, FF, and rewind. It's just like the Wally or Tivo, it's buffering the program while you're watching it. The Wally let's me pause for an hour, the Tivo for 30 minutes. I don't know how long the Tablo will do it.

 

[Bruce]

You never pause live TV with your Tablo?

Never, I have the Tablo for one reason, record all the OTA shows we watch and then binge watch them when they are complete for the season.

And yes I have mine set to the highest resolution.




Sent from my iPad using SatelliteGuys

 

[solarvic]

The tablo player sends the signal to your wifi modem then the programing is sent over your wifi so all your devices can receive the programing. If your wifi signal is too low then your tablo will not play right. I have had my tablo for 2 years,s and learned this the hard way. I also have my tablo,s hard wired to my modem. Probably why you can,t record in a higher definition. I still think you probably have too low a wifi signal. I just re read your postI was having buffering with my fire stick till I went to the 2.5 signal then the buffering stopped. My next plan is to get a poerline wifi extender so I gan go back to 5g on the modem.

 

[rvvaquero]

The tablo player sends the signal to your wifi modem then the programing is sent over your wifi so all your devices can receive the programing. If your wifi signal is too low then your tablo will not play right. I have had my tablo for 2 years,s and learned this the hard way. I also have my tablo,s hard wired to my modem. Probably why you can,t record in a higher definition. I still think you probably have too low a wifi signal. I just re read your postI was having buffering with my fire stick till I went to the 2.5 signal then the buffering stopped. My next plan is to get a poerline wifi extender so I gan go back to 5g on the modem.

I agree. I have a good router, but it is stretched. I have five cameras on it, in addition to several other devices. I do have a set of powerline devices, I may try them for the Tablo. The Tablo wifi signal is very strong, but bandwidth may be a problem.

I'm not using the commercial skip, so I don't think any of my programming has to go over the internet. I "think" the only thing my Tablo used the internet for is downloading the guide.

Thanks for responding.

 

[TNGuy84]

I had the Tablo for about a week. I didn't have a drive that was natively supported. I didn't want to spend $50 for one of their recommended drives. Two, I kept having aggravating issues that caused me to unplug and restart the unit. Some channels would get this really bad shrieking/chirping noise in the audio. It would fix upon restarting. It kept happening too often for me.

 

[rvvaquero]

I had the Tablo for about a week. I didn't have a drive that was natively supported. I didn't want to spend $50 for one of their recommended drives. Two, I kept having aggravating issues that caused me to unplug and restart the unit. Some channels would get this really bad shrieking/chirping noise in the audio. It would fix upon restarting. It kept happening too often for me.

Thanks.

I'm using a cheap Hyundai SSD drive which seems to be doing okay. However, my earlier problems may have been due to not having a WD hard drive like they suggest.

I'm going to play with this thing for a few weeks and see how it does. I'm mainly looking for options for when DISH gets too expensive.

My biggest complaint now with the Tablo is the tuner. I had earlier said that the tuner is equal to the tuner on my Wally. I've changed my mind. On a couple of VHF channels, ABC and NBC, the signal level seems to be on a par with the Wally, but there is lot's of pixelation and skipping and so forth while watching it. This is even when I'm on live TV, not just recording. These channels don't give me any problems on the Wally.

I really like the Tivo, but adding more TV's to it is expensive, as is getting into Tivo originally. I bought an older Premiere on eBay to experiment with. That's kind of why I wanted to try out the Tablo. When the Tablo works, it does a really good job. I'm still tweaking.

 

[ncted]

The Tablo I tried had a pretty sub-par tuner. The Recast does a much better job in my particular circumstances.

 

[rad]

One thing I've noticed with my Table Quad (the original one) is if you have any channels in your guide that are of anything lower then green on the signal reading it will cause recordings on totally different channels to have multiple recordings of small segments. The only solution Tablo support had was to remove any channels that didn't have green readings. What caused me problems was when I checked during the day things were fine but later at night, when I wasn't watching the signal dropped on on station which caused the problem.

 

[djont57]

I have had my Tablo for almost 4 yrs now, works great.

 

[solarvic]

I got grandfathered with a free guide for life just 1 day before you had to start paying for it. Had the commercial skip free when they were testing it in beta. Now you have to pay for commercial skip and I havn,t decided to have a paid subscription for that. I also have an ota antenna connected to 2 of my televisions and find that the tuner in the tablo player is as good as the television turners. My closest channels lose their signal more since the repack and a new transmitter that is supposed to have higher power for the ATSC 3.0. These are the Youngstown, ohio channels that Nextar has. One tablo has a Seagate hard drive and the other one has a western digital. both are 2 tb and work flawlessy.

 

[primestar31]

I heard that on the Roku app for Tablo, that IF you have closed-captioning turned on, every time you just change the tv channel, it auto turns itself off, and must be re-enabled.

Is that true?

 

[solarvic]

Just checked with my roku stick. I set it up for close captions and changed about 5 stations and it stayed on.

 

[Cheddar_Head]

I had the Tablo for about a week. I didn't have a drive that was natively supported. I didn't want to spend $50 for one of their recommended drives. Two, I kept having aggravating issues that caused me to unplug and restart the unit. Some channels would get this really bad shrieking/chirping noise in the audio. It would fix upon restarting. It kept happening too often for me.

Natively supported?? Pretty much any USB drive will work. I've had my Tablo Dual since they came out and have yet had a problem with any USB drive working with it. SSD drives may not be the best choice due to limited write cycles plus you don't really get any speed benefit due to the limitations of USB. I just wish I had spent the extra money for the Quad.