Solving playback issues

[therockchild]

I also have this issue with the roku ultra. I like to sometimes listen to Netflix with the TV off and my headphones on. I can press play and the show will continue for about 5 minutes before the app just closes. I tested this with netflix and amazon. Netflix will close and Amazon gives an error that "the connection to the hdmi is lost." This is with the most recent os12 update. I do use my roku to control my tv as well and it wasn't a problem until the most recent os12 update. 

[McGuit]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to this thread. Everyone has been so helpful. Yeah, I thought it was something I did, but I'm still having the issue with the Roku not staying on when the TV is turned off. It's like, they don't believe you when you turn off bandwidth saver and want the ROKU to keep playing throughout the night.

We have decided to get a new TV that has the ability to shut of the screen without turning off the TV and hope that works for her. Seems like a really expensive solution to something that ROKU has caused by having the Ultra not work through the night any more.

Once again, I appreciate everyone that has helped with this.

[Ry32 · Accepted solution]

Hi there, 

Probably a little late, but I came up with a workaround.  I was having the same issue, helping a business that wanted to play a video file on repeat from from a USB drive plugged into their ROKU Ultra. 

What I ended up doing is putting a powered HDMI splitter between the Roku and the TV to fool the Roku into thinking the TV was still on. This is model that I used. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HXFARS/

I tried changing CEC settings on the tv, as well as screensaver and power saving settings on the ROKU and so far this is the only method that I found that worked. 

Hopefully this helps. 

[McGuit]

Thank you so much. We are going to give this a try right away.

Appreciate your time and suggestion.

[McGuit]

To Ry32:

After ordering this product, I am happy to say that now my wife can sleep through the night with her ROKU Ultra streaming her shows and movies without interruption. The powered splitter works!

Thank you very much for your time and assistance with this situation. And to everyone else that came by with their suggestions of things to try. Thank you too.

This really is one of the best forum environments that I have ever seen.

You are all the best.

Thank you again

[Ry32]

Really glad this worked for you as well!

I think this confirms that something was changed in a recent update. Hopefully Roku can apply a fix in an upcoming update. 

[McGuit]

I hope you are right. Folks keep telling me that nothing changed for Media Player in the last update, but I believe that is not correct. Otherwise, how can something work for years and then change over night? I do hope that ROKU will continue to look at making Media Player stronger and more bullet proof as it is one of the main reasons I use the product.

Thank you again.

[atc98092]

RMP is only the user interface for the media player. The core functionality is within the Roku OS itself. This was explained to me by a previous Roku developer, who retired many years ago. While the RMP user interface hasn't been significantly changed in several years, the OS of course has had some updates. However, even the core OS hasn't had any updates for several months. My Premiere shows the last update (which was 12.0.0) was on May 5, so a bit more than two months. If anything has changed within that time period, it's not from any update from Roku. 

[Ry32]

"My Premiere shows the last update (which was 12.0.0) was on May 5"

May 5 was around the timeframe I started seeing the issue.

[atc98092]

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@Ry32 wrote:

May 5 was around the timeframe I started seeing the issue.

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Then it could very well be something to do with the 12.0 OS update. Unfortunately, Roku hasn't seemed to put any effort into local media playback for quite some time. It's the biggest reason that I use my Shield players almost exclusively for local media. But I don't use Plex for that either, as it has limitations for my use case. I need a player that will continue through my playlists until stopped. RMP would do that, but the lossless audio limitations means I have to transcode at least the audio. Using my Shield and Kodi as the player eliminates those issues. 

I am a beta tester for Roku, and have been trying to get some fixes in. But there just doesn't seem to be a focus on local media playback at this time.

If Roku would offer a player with audio bitstreaming of all codecs, and support some additional video codecs (VC-1 for example), I would probably only be using my Shield for YouTube (since I have an app that skips all ads).