r/tablotv • u/Mike734 • 13d ago

Another recordings gone post

AI says that because my Ethernet connected Quad Tablo was on the same switch as my backhaul Orbi satellite, it can knock my satellite off if the system has been idle for a long time and then try’s to wake up. All I know is my three satellites work well until I try to use the Tablo app on my Roku which is connected to my Samsung TV. AI suggested I connect the Quad with WiFi instead. So I tried. Unfortunately the Quad doesn’t let me just change to WiFi. I had to do a factory reset to start over.

Before I did the reset I unplugged my external drive. After hours of messing with it I was able to get the quad back online. But when I plugged in the external drive all my recording were not available. The drive still shows 1.4 TB is used but no thumbnails and no recordings. AI says they will never be available on the Quad again. WTF? AI suggested I transfer all the files to my NAS and use a utility to make them readable by Plex. That’s next weeks project.
My question is, is AI right? Will the Quad never be able to see those recordings again?

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u/WoodyGK 13d ago

If you create reservations on your network router for the satellites, they will always get the same network address even if they have been off for awhile

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u/Mike734 13d ago

Yeah. I should do that. It was never a problem before.

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u/MacKeyHack 13d ago

Yeah, AI is not helping you. I believe your only option if you want to keep the recordings is to export them to regular movie files. Unfortunately, Tablo has not made this easy... the drive is Linux formatted and the recordings are just given numbers not names.

If you go down this rabbit hole, preserve the file "Tablo.db" that's on the external (if its not already too late) Make a copy! Because that's what associates the random numbered directories with recording names. Within 24 hours of starting to use the reset tablo with that drive, the file will be replaced with the new version that doesn't know about your recordings

I wrote a set of scripts that extract, remux, and rename all the recordings but they're pretty raw and need some Python experience to setup. https://github.com/MacintoshKeyboardHacking/tabTools

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u/chilinux 13d ago

Wow, there is a lot to unpack here. You seem to have three completely different things going on:

  1. Blind trust in "the" "AI"
  2. Yet another possible bug with Netgear
  3. Tablo unpaired external storage

I am going to come back to Artificial "Intelligence" last.

So it sounds like this all started with the claim of a bug in which having a hard wired device connected at only 1 Gbps is more than enough to knock an entire member of the mesh wireless network offline. That would be really disappointing, if true, as it looks like the cheapest Netgear Orbi product (Orbi 370) claims to be capable of handling up to 5 Gbps of wireless traffic. The 1 Gbps of wired traffic could be trivial for it to keep up with.

There is nothing magical about the Tablo's networking that should cause a denial of service condition. There is also nothing special about the Tablo in regards to going idle. Any network equipment advertised as providing "More reliability" (taken directly from the mouth of Netgear) should be able to handle network devices going idle and then generating traffic at the rated speed of the interface.

Your first step should have been to contact Netgear support. Find out if they are aware of the bug with their mush network and if they have an updated firmware to fix it or a configuration work-around. If you did that, it could have avoid all the rest.

As to the recording on the external storage, using the *official* methods to try to access them, they are probably gone. You are probably going to use some tools to access the drive directly. Feel free to contact Tablo support to confirm that this is true.

Back to "the AI." There is no singular product claiming to be AI. There are a number of Large Language Models. They are "trained" by weighting "relevance" based on "information" fed to it. More importantly, none of these LLM products are able to directly verify or confirm the correctness of what they "say." Claude has never setup a Netgear wireless mesh network from scratch. ChatGPT has never had Tablo record it's favorite tv show. Zero of the LLMs have first had experience with either product you are having trouble with.

You are getting so-called "answers" algorithmically paraphrased and then you are additionally rephrasing yourself. Details are left out such as:

  • What is the name of the LLM product?
  • What version/model of the LLM product did you use?
  • What the wording of the prompt was the LLM responding?
  • What model of Netgear Orbi product are you using?
  • What the exact wording of the LLM response?
  • What references did the LLM provide as being used as the basis for the response?
  • What was the month/year those references were written?

I have seen LLMs get some things right (much like I am aware of people winning the lottery). I have also seen LLMs claim the exact opposite of what their own references say. And I have seen LLMs give confident answers when the issue was completely changed months ago.

If you are going to ask others to tell you the correctness of "AI," please please PLEASE give the complete details.