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monophoto's avatar
monophoto
Streaming Star
2 years ago
Solved

ROKU Stick - erratic startup

I have a Roku Streaming Stick on an LG Smart TV.  The Roku is powered from the USB port on the TV rather than from a separate power supply plugged into the wall..

When I first installed the Roku, it worked exactly as I expected and I was very pleased.  That was June 2023. I could press the power button, the TV would come on, and the Roku would wake up and start the 'bouncing Roku' thing for a few seconds, after which the home page appeared.

But starting a couple of weeks ago (in January 2024), something changed.  When I press the power button on the Roku remote, the TV comes on and goes directly to the TV home page.  The Roku doesn't wake up.  I have found that it I press the power button again, the TV goes off, and then if I press the power button again (a third time), the TV comes back on and the Roku wakes up. 

So why is it now necessary to go through this added step of turning on the TV, then turning it off, and finally turning it on again in order to invoke the Roku?

The only thing that I know has changed is that the LG did an OS update during this period, but I can't say for certain that the change in Roku performance correlated in any way with that update.

tv & player features
  • monophoto's avatar
    monophoto
    2 years ago

    It does have the power saving option, and at your suggestion, I turned it off.  That only made matters worse!  Now, the Roku menu never appears when I press the power button on the Roku remote - instead, every time I want to use the Roku, I have to use the native TV remote to refresh the input selection.  And sometimes I have to do that several times before the Roku wakes up. 

    I'm starting to think that updating the LG TV OS was the source of this problem.  If I had known three years ago what I know today about streaming, I would not have bought an LG.  The sales guy at the big box store said that the TV brand wasn't important - any brand would work just fine.  I think he had been a used car salesman in a previous life!

    [UPDATE]  Based on the assumption that the problem I encountered is an LG TV issue, I called the LG customer support number. It took a bit to get to someone with a pulse - their telephone robot seems biased toward directing users to an AI/Bot instead.  But once I got to a real person and described the problem, she said that (a) there is no way to undo an OS update and (b) the problem sounded like the OS update had changed some settings on the TV, and restoring those settings should resolve the matter.  She asked for permission to link directly to my TV so that she could change the settings.  Those changes appear to have resolved the problem, and now when I turn on the TV using the Roku remote, I get the Roku menu.

    If someone else has this problem, my recommendation would be to reach out to LG for help resolving it.  But if you want to experiment, there appear to be two key settings:

    Settings | General | System | Additional Settings | Home Settings

    • Home Auto Launch - OFF
    • Home Promotion - OFF

     

5 Replies

  • makaiguy's avatar
    makaiguy
    Community Streaming Expert
    2 years ago

    As a guess..

    Prior to this, by the time the tv booted up and checked its inputs for connected devices, the Roku had booted up far enough to be discoverable and the tv knows to display that input.

    More recently it may be that the tv is checking the ports before the Roku is ready to respond so the tv doesn't know there is an active device there.   It could be that the tv update causes it to boot up more quickly, or maybe a Roku update causes it to boot up more slowly.

    When experiencing this, I'd suggest trying to switch the tv to a different input and back, which should cause the tv to check the port again (do a new "handshake") and discover the connected Roku.  It might also help to be sure the tv is set to a different input than the Roku's when you shut it down so that you have to switch to the Roku's port thus forcing a new handshake.

    Added later:

    The other thing you can do is power the Roku from house power using a USB power adapter (like one from a s cell phone) instead of the tv USB port.  This way the Roku stays booted up and the tv will always find it there on startup.  This also allows the Roku do automatically download any updates during idle time.

    • monophoto's avatar
      monophoto
      Streaming Star
      2 years ago

       [UPDATED]

      Thanks.

      I dug out the charger that came with the Roku and reconnected it as the power source rather than the USB port on the TV.  When I turned on the TV a bit later using the Roku controller, it went directly to the Roku menu, and we were able to watch a couple of episodes of The Crown.

      However, when I turned the TV on again this morning using the Roku controller, it again went back to the native LG menu.  I turned it off, waited a few seconds, and then turned it back on.  This time it appeared to connect to the HDMI input, but gave me a message that there was no signal.  This situation repeated itself several times.

      After checking that all the connections were tight, I dug out the LG controller, turned on the TV, and switched the input to something else, and then back to HDMI.  Turned off the TV, and using the Roku controller, turned it back on - and it went to the Roku menu.  I turned it off, and back on again several times and it worked correctly.  However, when I came back a couple of hours later, it had reverted to the situation where turning on the TV using Roku remote resulted in the native LG menu, and the only way to get to the Roku menu was to use the LG remote to fiddle with the input setting.

      I understand the possibility that there could be some kind of a race between the TV and the Roku, with the device that starts first determining which menu gets presented.  However, that's not acceptable performance because that means that it is necessary to use the LG remote to select an input every time the TV is turned on - and that's too complicated! I want to use the Roku as the streaming source, and I want to use only one controller - the Roku controller.  

      And it is especially frustrating that the the Roku worked correctly for many months, and irritating new performance trait has only appeared in the last couple of weeks.

       

      • renojim's avatar
        renojim
        Community Streaming Expert
        2 years ago

        monophoto, does the stick have a "power saving" option under Settings->System->Power?  If it does and it's enabled, the stick may be going into a power saving mode.  The Power button on the remote only turns on the TV and doesn't affect the stick.  Try pressing Home on the Roku remote to wake the stick from power saving.  That setting seems to cause more problems than it's worth, so you may want to disable it if you have it.

        On the other hand, now that the stick is plugged into wall power, pressing Home (or any other non-TV control button) on the Roku remote should turn on the TV if "1-touch play" is checked under Settings->System->Control other devices.  I suggest always using Home (and I usually press it a couple of times) because Play/Pause and possibly OK may install unwanted channels being advertised on a screen saver.