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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
whart's avatar
whart
2,976 posts
 
@jea48 - well YAY! 
I'm a genius. :)
Not really. Glad you got it working. 
best,
bill
mtbrider
150 posts
 
Happy that your setup is now working.  You may have encountered the same unusual problem that I had on Thursday. I got a "not connected to the server" message when trying to use my ROKU to view a movie on Prime.  I tried Netflix on the ROKU and it worked fine.  I then went to the Prime app on my LG OLED and I could view the movie with no problems.  Later in the day, all was well with the ROKU.  I think there must have been some kind of temporary glitch between ROKU and Prime.
gareneau
110 posts
 
I too would like to cut the cable cord but judging from the posts here it isn't easy. Does anyone happen to know whether channels like the Tennis Channel and the Golf Channel are available a la carte? It would be so nice if I could just pick and choose the channels I want and not the hundreds I don't.
jafant
18,932 posts
 
Agreed-
Cable TV has become a rip-off to state the very least. Thank goodness that DirectV and Dish keeps the playing field somewhat level.
iron57
81 posts
 
Cut the cord 4 years ago, and primarily use Roku devices.  Right now the Roku Streaming Stick+ is about the best value to performance ratio for Roku devices, have not seen any lag or buffering issues.  Also, 4K content comes through no problem.

Key to this lifestyle is to try and get internet through fiber if possible, or spend a bit more to get stability and more mbs.  Had loads of issues with cable internet in my area, was a constant speed dial to the provider every two weeks or so.  Paying for 100 mbs, realizing only about 15 and down to 5 at some points.  Total garbage.  Getting 300 over WiFi now with the fiber, same price point (not an introductory either).  Realize this isn't available in most places though. 

Anyways, we will never look back.  Counting all subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu, Sling, etc) all in we are about 50% cheaper than the similar packages offered by dish or cable.  We were already paying for Netflix anyway. Interruptions in service are rare, and no more than cable outages (or thunderstorms when we had DirecTV). 

Bundles are of no use to us, we have no need for a landline.  Was also getting sick of the "threaten to quit" cycle to lower the rate every so often.  With this, I can quit with a click, and resume with the same whenever I want.


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