I have been having an intermittent problem with Amazon video on my TLC RokuTV.
When the problem shows up, it will do everything EXCEPT actually stream the video. Starts up, shows the menus, search works, etc…just won’t start the video stream…pinwheel until timeout, then error message. Seems to affect any video selection on Prime when it occurs.
I don’t think it is a connection problem…Other channels like Netflix or youtube work fine on the TV at these times. I can also run a concurrent second stream on my laptop or iPad. TV has a cat-6 connection to router. SpeedTest shows nominal downstream bandwidth. On rare occassions when my ISP is overloaded, I get buffering halts, but it still tries to work.
I don’t think it is a server side problem either, as I can stream the same Prime content via on my iPad or PC at those times the TV won’t start the stream.
I’ve tried deleting and re-installing ap/channel on the RokuTV…no change, still won’t work on random occasions.
The only non-standard thing in my setup is that I run a PiHole DNS level ad-blocker on my LAN. The laptop and iPad connections that work fine are utilizing this also, though.
I have no helpful advice, but just want to sympathize. Occasionally my Roku won’t access Prime or Hulu, I can’t even get into the menu. Netflix always works for some reason.
On my Firesticks, when they act up I usually restart the Firestick and it resolves things. Roku must have a restart in its settings. This happens mostly with HBOMax and Disney+.
I’ve also gone through on the last generation Firesticks and cleared memory. The latest ones seem to do a much better job at self-cleaning. You can see if the RokuTV has some similar feature.
I have a similar issue on my Samsung TV, the HBO Max And Paramount+ apps will sometimes freeze while watching a show and I have to restart the apps in order to get back to my program. Its a pain in the ass.
One useful thing to try with a Roku TV is a hard powercycle. Turning the TV on and off doesn’t cause it to actually boot again, it just turns the screen off and goes into a lower power mode. There is an option somewhere in the settings that will do it, or you can pull the power cord and then put it back in. If there’s some kind of broken state that may cause it to actually clear.
Thanks iamthewalrus_3! I’ll give that a try next time it happens. I didn’t think of this because the TV seems like it takes a few seconds to “boot” when I turn it on…displays wallpaper before bringing up home menu, etc.
I would try disabling it next time it happens to see if it has an effect. It’s possible the app on the TV is going a different path then opening it up on your laptop.
It’s possible the Pi-Hole is interfering, and disabling to test is definitely a good move. However, with my standalone Roku, it does DNS lookups on Google’s 8.8.8.8, even when told to do something different by DHCP. So, if your TLC Roku is similar, then it may be bypassing the Pi-Hole anyway.
I do some tricky things to redirect 8.8.8.8 to my Pi-Hole, and I can see that the Roku is constantly blocked trying to query scribe.logs.roku.com. If you see that in your Pi-Hole log, then the Roku is using the Pi-Hole.
I recommend using the “Disable” option in Pi-Hole to turn off blocking, then hard power cycle your Roku TV, to be sure that any DNS caches on the Roku are cleared. If that fixes the problem, then you can add the Roku to a client group that isn’t blocked, or whitelist domains as necessary.
I suspect though, that the Roku is bypassing the Pi-Hole anyway, in which case the Pi-Hole is not the problem.
My Roku has always been fine on Prime, but is strange on Paramount+. It is happy streaming Discovery, but gives an error when starting Lower Decks. Except that one time when it streamed Lower Decks fine. If that is related to the Pi-Hole, then it is a domain specific to the Roku, because Lower Decks works fine on my Ipad, which also uses the Pi-Hole. Except that one time when the Ipad couldn’t watch Lower Decks, either.