Sync video across multiple Rokus

Tablo saved our bacon while hosting a Super Bowl Party with DIRECTV Now letting us down. My only issue was that we had the main TV setup (roku) in one room with another Roku set up powering a projector in another area. The two units never were in sync. Our Atlanta fans in one room were happy several seconds or more early in one room during the first half and sad a little early during the second half.

Is there any way to add a sync feature or have all Rokus on the same live channel sync up?

I don’t see any way this is possible. I have seen this with the Tablo before, but I have also seen it with other apps, like WatchESPN. Sometimes I have a game on ESPN playing on my computer and my TV, and they aren’t in sync either.

There’s no official way to do this. The best would be to have people in both rooms try to coordinate pressing play at the same time which would get you close.

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I’m not sure there is a way to do this either. My first thought was that the distance between the router and the devices, as well as the connection type, would be a factor. For instance, both devices are wired but device A is in the room closest to the router and device B is on the other side of the house, device A is going to receive the feed sooner than device B.

You are right. The main TV’s Roku is hardwired while the projector’s Roku is connected through wi-fi. I guess that is just the nature of a recorded stream distributed over IP to devices that buffer the incoming video locally.

Latencies over a network is an issue regardless of non-synchronized service. In other words “devices that buffer the incoming video” includes device like … the network itself. Thus, you will have sync issues with anything streaming that doesn’t provide a synchronizing service (most if not all do not provide this).

And while there are also latencies involved in doing simultaneous output to the end device (a box that takes for example and HDMI-in and has multiple “mirrored” (and buffered a bit) HDMI-outs), that is likely your best bet for synchronized a/v. Just be aware of the USA’s stupid laws with regards to what is a “broadcast” and what is a “public performance” :slight_smile:

And on the latter, not saying there is a easy solution, just saying it can be done.

Use the same model Roku, with same firmware versions, and same network configuration in both rooms.
Start the Live TV channel on both Rokus at same time.

However, that still won’t prevent someone pausing the Live TV stream on either Roku, which gets you out of sync again.

Soundproofing one of the rooms is prolly a better option. :wink:

Only way I see this actually working is to use multicast with a single stream… then you could subscribe to a multicast stream from another endpoint… I would think this would be more useful for music than for TV in most cases…

Try adding a 10 second delay on both sides and match them up. If you tell the roku to stream realtime then there will be time differences because of buffering, but if you inject your own buffer into it and then match them up, they will never go out of synch.

I just seen this when looking for a way to sync two tv’s to the same app like Rokiosk.com. Can you instruct me how to add that 10 sec buffer you talked about? I would like to try it.
Mike

It wasn’t anything special or automated, pull your slider back 10 seconds so that you are on the pre-recorded stream and then manually adjust from there.