Delving deeper into the Roku "Loading..Please Wait" issue

Back to the TV signal strength issue. While running with a -3db signal reduction I still saw some LPW events on a Seinfield recording last night. Media player was my Rokucast wireless stick.

Trying 7db reduction for the next test…

@Wolfpack - The documentation for Roku is light but it seems to imply that this message is thrown when the Roku is waiting for enough data to buffer… Unfortunately that doesn’t give us much to go on.

It could be one (or more) of these issues:

  • The signal strength of the broadcast is bad or inconsistent
  • The antenna connection/strength is inconsistent
  • The connection between the Tablo and the router is bad or inconsistent
  • The connection between the router and the Roku is bad or inconsistent
  • The Roku is doing something unexpected
  • The Tablo is doing something unexpected

Everyone here could have any variation of this…

@Designer - Have asked the engineering team re: your packet capture… Stay tuned.

@kamy2015 - We do have a lot more control over the players on Android-based devices. If fact we just switched out the player from one that was Flash-based to an HTML-based one.

When I was troubleshooting my issues, I was watching the MNF on Sling and Roku 4. When I unplugged my router the game continued on for a good 10 seconds before it finally stopped. That tells me there’s a good bit of caching that happens.

Also, then issue is being seen on recordings and live tv. This should take any question of signal quality off the table.

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Except when it’s watched back on another player and “appears” clean.

Understandable that a recorded video could be corrupted, which causes loading issues on the Roku.
However, the same recording plays back fine via MS Windows 7 using Google Chrome Browser, and Android OS using the Tablo app.
This implies the player apps on the latter two are handling the corruption problem without experiencing the loading issues.
There’s gotta be a way to do the same for the Roku app.

And it is the NATURE of the recorded file “corruption” that is throwing a monkey wrench into the Roku players that has us all mystified. If it were Network issues I doubt the disturbances would continually happen at exactly the same places during recording playback.

My Hauppauge TV tuner croaks on error packets from the antenna. My LG tuner simply continues on without breakup. Different devices respond differently to problematic streams; it’s all in the coding…

Ok. just wanted to add another data point to this issue:

I have a PLEX media server on my network. Last night, I installed the Tablo channel in PLEX and watched live tv via the PLEX web interface and Tablo channel; absolutely no problems at all for hours… well, until I passed out. lol

So, I thought, if this is a communication issue between Roku4 and Tablo, what if I were to watch content via my PLEX server? This morning I used Roku4 PLEX app to watch the Tablo channel on my PLEX server for a TV show recording I had; the issue still exists, but manifests in a different way, probably due to the PLEX server being in between. Basically, instead of getting the “Loading … Please Wait” message, the video/audio stream freezes for a few seconds, and then continues playing. In summary:

Roku4[Tablo channel]->Tablo = results in LPW issue
Computer[web interface]->PLEX server[Tablo channel]->Tablo = no issues at all
Roku4[PLEX channel]->PLEX server[my own library] = no issues at all
Roku4[PLEX channel]->PLEX server[Tablo channel]->Tablo = results in frequent freezes like LPW issue

Even when the Tablo and Roku4 do not communicate directly, there appears to be a problem.

I’m pretty sure that the issues on the Rokus are specific to the Rokus only. Haven’t had any of the loading issues on the Fire TV and Nexus Player. The Tablo app works really nice on those players.

BTW, I just got the Fire TV (2nd gen) at Stapes for $75 (with a 25% off in-store coupon). Here’s the coupon if anyone is interested (expires 10/31).

You kind of suspect that either:

1.) The Roku H.264 decoder is less permissive about slightly non-conforming H.264 streams as compared to other players.

Or

2.) The Roku H.264 decoder is even stricter than the H.264 spec and in fact will balk at some conforming H.264 streams that don’t generate issues on other players.

In either case, it would seem that the Tablo H.264 codec is making as stream that might be on the “hairy edge” of what the Roku will play in the best of conditions, and that any networking or OTA signal quality issues might throw it over that edge.

As TabloTV rightly pointed out, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. have an inherent advantage in that they are generating their stream one time, and can do so NRT - Non Real Time - so they can make as perfect of a stream as they desire. Tablo on the other hand is generating these streams on the fly in real time - a much more difficult task.

You wonder if Tablo has made any changes in the 264 encoder in their device recently.

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@TabloTV
I believe this is true for Live TV, but not for recordings.
Recordings are already transcoded (encoded) to play on all Tablo supported players.
Que no?

Correct. So Sling TV is generating the streams on the fly (presumably using some very expensive industry hardware) but Netflix, Hulu, etc. etc. are encoded and stored once.

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Recordings are only re-encoded if you’re watching away from your home network.

@TabloTV
I believe it works this way for Tablo recordings…

  1. Tablo receives the TV broadcast stream, transcodes the stream from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, saving the resulting MPEG-4 file on the hard drive attached to the Tablo.
    This transcoding process is performed once.
    Transcoding, by the way, just means encoding to a different format.
  2. At this point the recorded file is ready for playback on any Tablo supported playback device.

And, I see @TabloTV responded stating recordings are only re-encoded (transcoded) if you’re watching away from your home network.

I think the re-encoding is simply to a lower bit rate in that situation (based on your remote viewing setting in the Settings Menu)…not an actual transcoding of any kind.

Just learned a new word…
Transrating: the process of changing a video file from one bitrate to another.

We’ll I guess I did too! :smile: