Freezing and crashing in Roku players

Support & Troubleshooting
1

In the last week, both of my four tuner Tablos have started experiencing playback problems when using the Roku player, seven of which are installed in my home. They all fail in the same way, sometimes rebooting the Roku, frequently stalling with no ability to either fast-forward or fast reverse.

Clearly the culprit is the recently released Roku operating system firmware.

Since I have both Apple TV and Amazon Fire Cube players, along with iOS devices running Tablo app software, and all of these devices playback beautifully, the problem is exclusively in the Roku player firmware. Perhaps the Roku app written byTablo needs some type of update to accommodate the new Roku operating system?

I have seen some mention of this problem here on the Tablo forum, but wonder if any progress has been made in beta or other testing to fix this mess?

Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

Larry

2

I’ve too had some playback quirkiness lately, where the screen is blank with only the spinning circle being displayed. The Roku remote seems unresponsive.

My setup: Tablo 4-Tuner, Roku media player. Firmware is up-to-date for all devices.

My solution is to use the Back button to go back to the title screen. Then press Play and the Tablo asks “Start from the Beginning” or “Resume”. I select Resume and my program resumes playing from where it left off.

This problem seems to happen whenever Commercial Skip “skips forward” and resumes playback. I’ve had it happen when I’ve just fast forwarded the playback too.

I have not reported this as I can’t repeat it on the program I’m watching and so far it seems to happen randomly.

1 Like
3

Thanks for your reply and comments.

I have experienced the same ability which you describe to occasionally recover from the freeze by going back and restarting/resuming play back. Sometimes this option works and other times it doesn’t, ignoring the Back button entirely.

No doubt there is a new problem which has arisen, and the only thing that is changed is the release of the new firmware from Roku in their version 11 operating system, a major update.

I am wondering if Tablo is attempting to make any changes to the Roku app in an attempt to overcoming this issue, or if any schedule for fixing this problem may exist.

Larry

4

Same setup, problem and solution here!

5

We did make some changes in our last Roku app update to ensure compatibility with Roku OS 11 but have not seen any of the issues reported here during QA or beta testing.

Can you all confirm what Roku model and Tablo model you’re using as well as confirm that your Roku devices are running OS 11?

We have confirmed a few reports of others experiencing problems, but they’ve been on more obscure Roku TV models.

At this point we believe the issue is with the Roku OS 11 update and are waiting on a newer point release from Roku to see if that improves the situation.

6

Here’s my setup…

  • Tablo 4-Tuner, F/W 2.2.40
  • Roku Model 4200X, Channel Ver: 2.19.1, S/W Ver: 11.0.0 Build 4193
7

My 4200 is 9 years old and over the years there have been numerous Roku OS releases that crashed and burned the tablo app. So I guess I made the right decision when Roku made the gracious offer to upgrade to Roku OS 11 and stayed on Roku OS 10.5.

Of course the last tablo Roku app update really did seem to slow down skipping over long CS segments. I could almost take a nap watching the blank screen.

8

My hardware consists of 7 Roku 3 streaming media players ethernet connected to a Quad (non HDMI) Tablo and a 4 tuner older Tablo.

Firmware, app software, and operating system updates are all current to the latest version of public releases (no beta software).

9

Glad to hear that some recognition of this problem at Tablo has taken place, with attempts to remedy new problems.

I very much look forward to resolution of this extremely annoying issue.

Thank you again,

Larry

10

Roku presents a particularly difficult platform for synchronizing with media which arrives from another computer (Tablo), especially if noise corruption is present.

Having also witnessed, like zippy, very long and very frustrating periods of very unstable Tablo / Roku performance over the nearly 8 years of Tablo ownership, I have seen the struggles which software engineers have encountered trying to get synchronization. When the two devices, Roku and Tablo, are not synced in lock-step, the stalling, freezing, crashing, rebooting is inevitable.

Obvious changes have been made over the years by Tablo software people to recognize this issue, which I once described using software engineering parlance as a “software race” condition. Google this term if you want further clarification.

There is a very good reason why, for example, the deletion process has eventually, years later, been broken into two successive steps , first stopping the recording, then deleting the file. Similarly, adding extended time delays to slow the attempted synchronization process, affectively giving extra time for the two devices to avoid the race condition, uses the same design trick/philosophy.

Adding delays deliberately to prevent failures in both scrubbing the timeline (fast reverse or forward), and file deletion creates additional waiting time and makes jumping commercial breaks and file deletions take longer.

Operating systems on other players can use “semaphores”, (another software engineering term worth googling) to ensure lack step synchronization , thus avoiding longer waits and allowing fast scrubs, deletes, etc.

Therefore, having seen eight years of Roku issues, none of which have shown up in any substantial way on the numerous Apple TV, Amazon fire TV, nexus, or iOS players, I am not very surprised that we now have yet another round of this horse sh*t going on, eight years into the product life cycle.

Larry

11

I’ve experienced exactly this scenario several times now over the past 3 weeks (or so).

Commercial skip appears to zip ahead and then get stuck, spinning forever.

Roku Ultra, version 11

12

Tablo; 4-Tuner, F/W 2.2.40. Roku’s; 4670X and 4630X both 2.19.1 and 11.0.0.

13

Upgraded Roku TV to 11 and having no problems with my Tablos or Roku.

14

I have also upgraded multiple Roku TVs and Roku players to Roku OS 11 and am not having any problems with my original 4 tuner Tablo or the newer quad.

15

People that are not having this problem need to tell us what model Roku and firmware you’re running.

1 Like
16

Roku 3 (4230X), 11.0.0 build 4193-04

Tablo OG 2-tuner, 2.2.40, Lifetime guide sub, no commercial skip sub

I watched an entire USFL game, skipping forward through commercials and dead time, no issues.

Maybe that’s not enough data though.

17

Well I finally got version 11.0 build 4193-46 on my Roku Ultra 4660X (1 day, 15 hours, 21 minutes ago :stuck_out_tongue:). Original 7 year old 2 tuner Tablo. Someone in my house will certainly tell me if there are any issues with Judge Judy recordings.

18

I am experiencing the same thing - randomly a commercial break/skip causes a stall - displayed as a spinning circle on a black screen with 'Option’s on the bottom.

It has happened a few times the past @2-3 weeks? I have a REPEATABLE occurrence - Law and Order - S09E21 - The Great Pretender - commercial is 7:20-10:40. Flash of commercial, black screen for a second or two, then I have the spinning circle for 57 seconds.

Same Tablo - different Rokus. Happens on one Roku but NOT the other. (Meaning, I can set up the same test (multiple times) and it only shows this behavior on one Roku not the other.)

Both Rokus access the Tablo with Wi-Fi. The Roku with the occasional issue, Wi-Fi router and Tablo are within 2 feet of each other. Hisense Roku TV that does NOT have the issue is in the bedroom across the house from the Wi-Fi (farther away).

Tablo - QUAD - External HD - WD Elements 2620 1018 (5001 GB) (3.77 TB used) - Tablo Firmware - 2.2.40, Roku Channel Version - 2.19.1, Model - 3810X, Software Version - 11.0.0 build 4193

Roku Details (taken from the Roku screen) - 11.0.0, Build 4193-50 (I document this because it has ‘-50’ on Build)

I have commercial skip subscription.

NO ISSUE: 32" Hisense Roku, Roku TV - 8225X, Hisense Model - 32H4+, Software Version - 11.0.0 build 4193-90

(Note: I spent time writing this up because this community helped with my issue last year - multiple parts of a single recording. Ended up needing a new power adapter - who would have thought that.) (And Tablo is very cool.)

19

Last night we were watching several recorded shows the first was an hour long and manually skipping through commercials went fine. The second show, a half hour, also went fine. The third also a half hour did what some people are describing. I clicked forward through the commercials then after clicking play I got the black screen with the never ending spinning circle. This happened twice (2 commercial breaks). I was able to hit the back (exit) button to get out of it then push play and everything works fine again. So this is a new thing for us as it never happened before we got Roku version 11.

Version 11.0 build 4193-46 on my Roku Ultra 4660X. Connected through WiFi.

20

Roku was nice enough to drop version 11 on my 4200 a couple of nights ago. The very first recording was non-CS and had a problem where if you quickly hit the fast forward to 3X, the scrubber says it’s 3X but it only moves at 1X. And then after around 5 seconds it zooms to where it thinks it should be. And all of my recordings are 720P.

slingtv seemed have a similar problem with it’s DVR recordings. But I just got a complete update to the slingtv app - so who knows. As long as the Roku doesn’t reboot I’ll live.