2. home-theater
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I picked up a ROKU, I am wanting to cut the Cable TV cord.

I first tried the ROKU hooked up to the TV with an HDMI in the Great room/Living room and it worked well. We even watched a couple movies on Amazon Prime. No dropouts or buffering. (ROKU is connected to 60mbps speed internet through a switch with CAT5e.)

Last night I thought I would try it in the HT room and see how it worked and how the picture quality looked there.
Hook up of the ROKU to the switch again by CAT5e. From the output of the ROKU I connected the HDMI cable to an HDMI input on a Marantz SR8002 HT receiver.

I then turned on the equipment and set the Marantz to the correct HDMI input port and the ROKU home page came up just fine. I checked YouTube and it seemed ok. When I tried Amazon Prime it loaded fine. But, when we found a movie we wanted to watch, it started to load, but then an info block came up on the screen of the TV saying there wasn't enough bandwidth to load the movie. I tried again 2 or 3 times, same thing. I knew the problem was not the Ethernet cable. Works fine when using it for Netflix.

So what the heck was the problem? I even tried a different HDMI input port on the Marantz. Why? I don't know but I did....
 For a test I disconnected the ROKU HDMI cable from the Marantz and connected it directly to an HDMI input port on the Samsung LED TV. I then attempted again to watch the same movie on Amazon Prime as I tried earlier. Movie loaded without a glitch. Not a dropout or buffering glitch once throughout the entire movie.
What gives?

Jim
jea48

Showing 1 response by instlouis

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instlouis
91 posts
 
I am a Roku fan and allowed me to drop all the BS and just buy bandwidth from Spectrum/Charter at $60 per month for 100Mbs.  Add in the cost of Netflix & Prime and I'm still under $100 per month ! 
I was given my first Roku years ago to wring it out versus Apple TV box. The Roku won. With the advent of 4K HD, I bought a Roku3 and aside from some initial glitches auto updates fixed everything. I found that hard wiring versus Wi-Fi has best performance, I also suggest adding a 8Gb-16Gb MicroSD for improved service. Both Rokus are happily still in service.
( Note :  Anyone notice the Netflix folks jacked up the rate ( $10.99 ) and took away the 5.1 surround ?    Grrrrr rat bastards ! ) 
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