If you’re having trouble watching TV with your Tablo device, there are two main sources of potential problems:
- Slowdowns on your home Wi-Fi network/router, causing buffering.
- Low signal strength/quality coming from your over-the-air TV antenna, causing pixelation or breakup in the video.
Here’s how to spot the difference…
If you’re experiencing:
- Occasional or frequent pixelation, glitching, breakup or patterning of the video during playback.
- Brief buzzing or brief loss of sound.
… then the issue is related to the signal strength or quality coming from your over-the-air antenna to your Tablo.
To resolve this, try improving your over-the-air antenna setup and then run a fresh channel scan on your Tablo DVR.
If you’re experiencing clean video during playback (no pixelation) but:
- Occasional or frequent stops and starts, stutters or freezing.
- A spinning circle or loading… please wait message.
… then the problem source is most likely a poor Wi-Fi signal on your home network, either from your router to your viewing device (Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, tablet, etc.) or from Tablo to your router.
Because Tablo relies on your internal home network (LAN) this can happen even if the external internet speeds (WAN) you get from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) are fast.
This is one of the reasons why you may not experience buffering when streaming video from online sources like Netflix.
The keys to resolving this can be found in these blog posts:
- What Wi-Fi Frequency Should I Use?
- Streaming HD Video Without Buffering
- Ten Ways to Ensure Your Wi-Fi Network is Ready for Streaming
If you’ve followed the troubleshooting steps and are still experiencing problems, don’t hesitate to contact Tablo Support for further assistance.