The whole thing including TV just switched off

Support & Troubleshooting
1

Was watching some recorded program last night with Tablo from my Roku (still at the V7.7 software level :neutral_face: ) when I tried to skip over the last advertising segment to get to the closing scenes. Not sure what exactly happened, but the TV switched off - and thereā€™s not even a power button for the TV on the Roku remote. When I got the TV back on, the program showed as being watched to the end. Ofc, I think that may just be normal since many programs show completed when there may be a minute or two of recording still left. Anyway, my wife observed that that had happened to her a few times.

Iā€™m perplexed. I know the HDMI from Roku to the TV can switch the TV on, or force HDMI input selection, but switching off?? And can Tablo be the culprit? How??

2

Gotta be Roku weirdness. The Tablo canā€™t generate any commands. Did the Tablo app crash? Or the Roku? Or was it just the TV off?

3

Yea, my first thought also, except Iā€™ve never encountered this before, and similar to Tablo, I doubt Roku can generate a switch-off command. I donā€™t know if anything crashed, it was exactly as if someone pressed the power button on the TV remote. In fact, I first asked my wife if she accidentally sat on the TV remote. :open_mouth: but that was on a side table.

I simply pressed the Roku ā€œHomeā€ button (my usual way to turn TV on, that went to Roku Home, selected the Tablo app, then went through Recordings, found my showā€¦ eventually got there to see ā€œwatchedā€, then fast-forwarded to get the closing scene,

Weā€™ve never had it watching Netflix, Amazon or any of the other Roku apps. My wife claims it happened to her a few times watching the Tablo app, hence me mentioning it here. Would be nice if I could look at Tabloā€™s logs and absolve them. ā€¦

4

Iā€™m not sure what you think you could possibly see in the Tablo (server) logs. It has no IR or RF transmit capability. It canā€™t send any commands.

Now, if the Tablo app on the Roku did something weird and managed to get the Roku to send the command, thatā€™s a possible. But the server logs wonā€™t help there.

5

that touches on two subjects.

The TV can sense when wither my Blu-Ray, my Roku, or Chromecast starts a media stream (for want of a better word) and then it automatically switches on and switches to that HDMI channel. So do many HDMI switches. That is not IR or RF, Itā€™s straight off the HDMI cable. I was just wondering if there are similar mechanisms in HDMI (and by implication, any device connected to my TV over HDMI) that can tell the TV monitor to switch off

The second part about Tablo logs is that if there was some kind of a crash on Tablo or Tablo/Roku app, that might be in the logs. The side effect of the crash on connected devices is another thing.

If (and now Iā€™m connecting two hypotheticals together) there is a HDMI sequence that can tell a monitor to turn off, then it could conceivably be bad data after the crash that imitates that command and cause my TV to switch off.

Or at least I can say that the Tablo is completely innocent in the whole matter since it does not report any abnormal situation.

Here is the proper term HDMI-CEC:
https://elinux.org/CEC_(Consumer_Electronics_Control)_over_HDMI

and as can be seen from the list, there is indeed a command to ā€œturn all connected devices to Standbyā€

6

Forget long outstanding requests for 5.1, better remote connect, control over episode build up, signal tuner, etc., tablo must have zoomed right past these requests and now be the in-house hub for controlling the local internet of things.

I donā€™t think an ecclesiastical declaration of forgiveness of sins is needed.

7

Not hypothetical at all. Itā€™s called CEC or HDMI-CEC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control

And yes, I think itā€™s theoretically possible that some Tablo app command or inadvertent call to a private API MIGHT cause the Roku to send a CEC command to the TV. But the Tablo server is never going to see that. Maybe youā€™ll see some indication that the Tablo app disconnected from the server at the same time. But that only tells you the connection dropped. Most likely it was the Roku OS that caused the glitch and dropped connection on itā€™s own.

8

CEC has been around for awhile. The new Roku has volume and power control - depending on HDMI port, HDMI cable, etc.

Most people who want the adventure of debugging a Roku app investigate which secret screens are functional on their specific Roku model.

9

@TabloTV, @TabloSupport,

Guys, this issue is going to be the death of my Tablo experience. I was sitting in my study last night when my wife called me over to ā€œfix this!ā€ Turns out she was trying to watch Madam Secretary and the entire TV switched off twice from the start of the episode to when she called me over. Now my wife is usually pretty easy-going, but when my messing around with gadgets impacts her quality of life, my gadgets have to yield. Iā€™m going to have to get to the bottom of this or my Tablo (of which I"m growing fond) is going to find itself on Craigslist.

Briefly: The symptom. The entire TV switch off by going into standby mode. Just as if someone had pressed the power-off button on the TV remote. The TV remote, however is not anywhere near any person or animal - itā€™s lying in full view on the side table. At the time, nobody was making any adjustments via the Roku remote - it was lying next to the TV remote.

There are 3 actors in this problem: The Tablo, the Roku Premiere+, and the LG 4K TV. Tablo is Ethernet connected to a TP-Link 802.11ac router via a gigabit switch and about 18 inches of Ethernet cable. The antenna is a leaf-type with integrated, powered amplifier (rather thin coax cable) and maybe 10 feet of cable.

The Tablo does not exhibit this behavior when watched on my desktop, nor, as far as I know, on another, much older Roku (Roku 3?) attached to a FHD Samsung TV

The Roku Premiere+ is still on Rokuā€™s 7.7.0 software level. Or was last night - Iā€™ve not checked for overnight updates. It declined a manual update last night. It is connected wireless to the same router. A Roku speed test shows it getting between 23-31 Mbps throughput.Never lower than 23, mostly around the 30 Mbps to the Speedtest servers.

I forgot last night that we could use the LG TV WebOS app, and had my wife install the Roku app on her smartphone. (There was a lot of comments on the long sync time, hope thatā€™s a one-off). Then she cast it from her phone to the Chromecast Ultra attached to the TV and managed to watch the rest of the show uninterrupted.

Based on this, Iā€™m firmly in favor of putting the blame on the Roku Premiere+, except that it never exhibits this behavior when streaming from Netflix or Amazon.

So, please tell me if you guys can suggest any problem determination steps or actions I can take to resolve this issue. It will be much appreciated. I donā€™t really feel like looking into the whole HDHomerun + Plex thing and Iā€™m running low on space on the NAS anyways - which will be an expensive upgrade to upgrade at least 2 of the HDDs on the NAS to >4TB drives.

10

Update: I did contact the Roku support chat line and that was a thoroughly unsatisfactory experience.

Their advice was to

  1. Switch Roku to a different HDMI port on the TV. I canā€™t do that, since only the one port supports high-bandwidth HDCP 2.2 complaint data. :frowning: Also, same response as to 2, below.

  2. Move the Roku and the TV to a different wall power socket. Like thatā€™s going to change anything. I can watch for hours and this wonā€™t happen with slightly altered combination of actors. :frowning:

11

I really canā€™t think of anything the Tablo could do to force the Roku to turn off your entire TV - we just donā€™t have that kind of access. Weā€™ve seen Roku HDMI issues in the past (one of their HDMI errors is one of the most viewed threads on our forum).

My first move would be to try a different HDMI port - but that sounds like a non-starter. Can you try swapping out the HDMI cable itself?

12

@TabloSupport Thanks! yea sure, I have a different cable I will try.

Iā€™m hypothesizing (or sucking my thumb in ignorance, more likely) that itā€™s something rogue-like in the transmission that mistakenly gets interpreted as a HDMI-CEC signal to the TV to go into sleep mode.

Itā€™s extremely frustrating.

Another step could be to run my trusty 100-foot Ethernet cable into the Rokuā€¦ Itā€™s Christmas time, so ā€œdeck the halls in Ethernetā€¦ā€

13

You should be able to turn off CEC control (the ability for the device to change TV settings like power / volume / etc)ā€¦

Start in the Roku itself, navigate into the system settings and turn off all of the features under ā€œcontrol other devicesā€.

If that doesnt work, or for extra measure, your TV probably has a way to deactivate that feature as well.

TVs have different labels for it, they may actually say CEC:

Or they may have their own title like Aquos link, Samsung Anynet or LGs simplink:

Its not really a fix for the cause but it should stop the symptom.

1 Like
14

You know what was the first thing that went through my mind when I read that? The ā€œSweet Transvestiteā€ lines from RHPS. :smiley:

Youā€™re right, if this fixes the symptom Iā€™ll be a mile closer to the determining the actual problem. Of course, it does mean that for a while weā€™ll be juggling remotes. Fortunately, someone make me aware of the Roku Sideclick devicesā€¦

Now Iā€™m thinking of theā€™ For every door that closes a window opens" line from the ā€œSound of Musicā€ā€¦

1 Like
15

You sure your TV doesnā€™t have some sort of timer enabled that after X minutes it shuts off? Like a sleep mode?

This can get inadvertently enabled.

16

Sure, the TV has a sleep timer. but the times I find this occurring are random and not fixed intervals. Didnā€™t happen at all last night, and it never happens when we watch another Roku app such as Netflix or Amazon.

17

The sleep timer is enabled? Or off entirely?

18

Sorry, I wasnā€™t clear. The sleep timer is NOT enabledā€¦ Iā€™ve never found a practical use for it.

19

HAH!

Well it was Halloween, a great night for RHPSā€¦ Not sure about Sound of Music, technically they are both musicals but otherwise, not much in commonā€¦

20

You got that right! :smiley: