I had the same rendering problem as well as compilation error. I fixed the problem by finding that I was not passing Fragment when i was creating Addtab. You must pass atleast one fragment on mTabHost.addTab. Below is the working code.
private FragmentTabHost mTabHost;
mTabHost = (FragmentTabHost)findViewById(android.R.id.tabhost);
mTabHost.setup(HomeActivity.this, getSupportFragmentManager(), android.R.id.tabcontent);
mTabHost.addTab(mTabHost.newTabSpec("home").setIndicator("Home"), HomeFragment.class, null);
mTabHost.addTab(mTabHost.newTabSpec("mysheets").setIndicator("MySheets"));
mTabHost.addTab(mTabHost.newTabSpec("bookmarks").setIndicator("Bookmarks"));