I've just received my Roku XD player. Even though I've got the player hooked up through a HDMI cable I cannot watch HD movies on Amazon.com. The message:
"Unable to play in HD" pops up. For solutions it states to make sure you connect through an HDMI cable, which I have, to make sure the settings are set for HD (1080p) which it is. Why won't it play HD?

Are you connected wireless or wired to your network? Your connection speed may not be fast enough to support hd streaming.

Wireless. I have Comcast cable. I did a speed test and results were good. I also have a Roky player set up in another room (older model) which works fine.

You are not telling us the speeds. Try switching boxes, switching tv's, are both boxes wireless? Are both boxes on at the same time? Did you try it wired instead of wireless? If it is new, just rma it under warranty.

Download speed: 11.47 Mb/s
Upload speed: 2.61 Mb/s
PING: 26 ms

I have an older box still with the component outlets which displays in HD without a problem on both tvs. So yes, did try the switching of the boxes and the switching of the cables. Tried resetting, restarting the box several times. Restarted router and modem several times. No success. My connection is wireless, hi-speed w/Comcast.

Interesting note. Roku claimed the problem was with Amazon Video OD, since we tested the HD feature with their channel. Old box streams movies fine, new box gives message "Unable to view in HD". Was on the phone w/Amazon for about 3 hours. What they found is that whenever the old box is hooked up the bandwith is 9000. Plenty to view HD. But hook up the new box and the bandwidth goes down to 1200 and then even further to below 1000. Which is a very interesting find. Especially since the Roku tech people never got farther than providing me with the solution of restarting/resetting/checking the display settings.

It seems something is different about the new boxes in how they use the bandwidth. Really curious to see if there are other Roku users who are experiencing the same problem.

Really curious to see if there are other Roku users who are experiencing the same problem.

Count me among those with this problem. I can stream Netflix and Amazon VOD perfectly fine on my Vizio connected set, but the Roku XD that I just got refuses to stream HD even though my download speed exceeds 15Mbps and my wireless connection reads excellent when I do a network test. I even ran a test with both the TV and the Roku streaming simultaneously. The TV ran HD just fine and never re-buffered; the Roku dropped down to SD and re-buffered often.

I spoke with Roku tech support and after redoing all the diagnostic work I had already done, they suggested I change my DNS server to OpenDNS. I don't think this helped, but it didn't hurt anything, so I have left it this way.

Any suggestions from the experts?

Similar problem here. In my case, the Roku XD simply doesn't output in 1080, only 720. I am connected with an HDMI cable and I have switched the settings to 1080 but the only output is in 720, streaming or not.

The Roku does not upscale. There are very few 1080p streaming sites.

lotusguy wrote:

Count me among those with this problem. I can stream Netflix and Amazon VOD perfectly fine on my Vizio connected set, but the Roku XD that I just got refuses to stream HD even though my download speed exceeds 15Mbps and my wireless connection reads excellent when I do a network test. I even ran a test with both the TV and the Roku streaming simultaneously. The TV ran HD just fine and never re-buffered; the Roku dropped down to SD and re-buffered often.

I spoke with Roku tech support and after redoing all the diagnostic work I had already done, they suggested I change my DNS server to OpenDNS. I don't think this helped, but it didn't hurt anything, so I have left it this way.

Everything started working correctly when I changed my HDMI cable and reset the Roku player. I'm not sure if Roku did something or not, but I'll take it. Diagnostic mode reports that a Netflix HD stream uses 3.8Mbps from my 12.1Mbps network. Sounds about right. HD streams now with full quality at 720P and no rebuffering.

Everything started working correctly when I changed my HDMI cable and reset the Roku player. I'm not sure if Roku did something or not, but I'll take it. Diagnostic mode reports that a Netflix HD stream uses 3.8Mbps from my 12.1Mbps network. Sounds about right. HD streams now with full quality at 720P and no rebuffering. [/quote]

Yes, same thing happened to me. Except I didn't change anything. All of a sudden things worked as they were supposed to...for a couple of days. Now it's back to getting only 2 solid dots out of 4 or even just one. And again, only with the new XD box. If I go upstairs I get great quality with the old box... I hope your problem has been fixed permanently though and you will receiving great quality.

Could you tell me how to run a diagnostic while watching Netflix?

lotusguy wrote:

Could you tell me how to run a diagnostic while watching Netflix?

Certainly.

On your remote, hit HOME 5 times, hit REWIND 3 times, hit FAST FORWARD 2 times. From the list that appears, select ENABLE PLAYBACK DEBUGGING. Now whenever you stream a movie or TV show, a window will pop up telling you the speed of the stream and the speed of your network. To get Netflix in HD you will need to exceed 3.5Mbps. To turn off diagnostic mode, do the same tap dance on the remote as above and select DISABLE PLAYBACK DEBUGGING. Good luck.

So far, it is still working properly. I'll report any changes.

will try this. Thanks!

Add me to the list of HD challenged ROKU users. HD comes in fine when box is connected with ethernet. When I go wireless, even 2 feet from router it drops down to 2 dots. Problem occurs with Netflix and Amazon. I'm on Comcast and believe the connection speed is 16KB per second. My box is one of the new ones -- 10 days old or so

All ideas welcome!

16KB per second would be twice as fast as dialup ? 56Kb/8=8*2=16 ? Or do you think it's 16 megabits which would be 2MB/sec? Then of course you need to account for comcast's burst mode - which pushes any extra server bandwidth available to your modem for the first 30 megabytes of data or so and therefore invalidates 90% of all speed tests.

Just received my unit for Christmas. I am having the same problem trying to view in HD from Amazon. Has anyone been able to resolve this issure.