Heads-Up for Golf Fans Watching via Roku

Hey folks -

After the Masters aired in June we heard from a handful of Roku users that they had difficulties watching the recording:

Given the British Open is airing this weekend we wanted to give folks a heads-up that subsequent testing revealed a Roku-only limitation that does not appear to be documented.

It seems that the maximum length of recording that most recent Roku devices will play successfully is just over 8 hours. Higher-end models seemed to be able to handle slightly longer recordings than the lower-end ones.

When the Extend Live setting is turned on, these 8 hour recordings turn into 10 hours which is well beyond the powers of even the Roku Ultra.

Since we’re still not sure why this limitation seems to exist, it may take us a while longer to find a good solution.

In the meantime, if you’re planning to record the British Open this weekend or any SUPER long recording, there are two workarounds to consider:

  • Option A - Temporarily disable ‘Extend Live’ within the settings screen of your Tablo. ( If you’ve already scheduled the airing, you’ll need to unschedule it, disable the setting, then reschedule it. ) The upside is that you should get automatic commercial skip on the recording. The downside is that you might miss any potential runover, unless you schedule the airing directly after which is swimming in the US and Cash Cab in Canada.

Since we didn’t test on MUCH older Roku units, they may have a lower ‘time limit’ which is why you may want to consider…

  • Option B - Set two 4 hour manual recording blocks. Or a 4 hour + 5 hour recording block to catch any potential runover. The upside is that they’ll play with zero problems on any Roku. The downside is that you won’t have automatic commercial skip.

If you watch on any other device BUT Roku, the playback should be just fine.

If/when we find a better solution for this we’ll make sure to let you all know.

It’s the British Open (usually just called “The Open”), not the US Open.

But thanks for investigating the issue and coming up with reasonable workarounds.

D’oh.

Can you tell I am not a golf fan? Guess you can now.

1 Like

not “usually” …except the vendor for tablo’s guide data

The field is trimmed as the third round begins at the 2019 British Open. Among this year’s golfers is Tiger Woods, one of just three players in the field to have won the British Open multiple times. Tiger owns 10 top-10 career finishes at this event

I thought maybe they just “Americanized” it, but it seems Gracnote really missed something here.

This is just the ongoing difference between what the restful api apps like Roke and Fire TV preview app and the HTML apps like fire TV app display for sports.

It’s seems to be off more for golf then other sports.