Channels & viewing

[chudan]

Not sure what is going on, but the stupid Roku Channel movie Jingle Bell Love keeps auto playing on my Roku. I have a Roku Ultra 4800X. What's really annoying is I can be in my Blu-ray player or on the home screen of my Samsung TV using their remotes (not Roku remote) and the screen will blink, then goes into installing Roku Channel, and then starts playing Jingle Bell Love movie. For all intents and purposes, this problem has made my overall home theater system unusable. I'm at the point that if I can't fix this I'm going to have to dump the Roku completely. I will also add this only started after this movie started having a link icon and Roku play/pause button displayed in lower left hand corner of Roku home screen. Makes me wonder if any remote (Roku, Samsung TV, Panasonic Blu-ray) usage causes the Roku to think I am clicking the play button for the movie on the Roku home screen.

[AvsGunnar]

@chudan 

Very likely (your remote suspicion).

Users frequently report issues similar to this (content playing, channels/app being automatically installed) whenever the lower left ad is displayed on the Home Screen.

Doesn't happen to everyone so likely something in the setup is causing the Roku to sense the Play/Pause button has been pressed.

The lower left ad is not nornmally always present though (will come and go with different promotions), although unfortunately with the holidays, this ad is likely to be more present for a while.

Maybe try placing something in front of the 4800, or hide it behind the tv and see if that helps with some errant IR signals it may be receiving. (when hidden, your 4800 will communicate with the Roku remote via RF/wifi direct so does not need to be visible/have line of sight).

[chudan]

It's possible I just solved my own problem. It appears the smart remote for my Samsung TV was set up as a universal remote for the Roku and Blu-ray player. Apparently the issue is with the Samsung Smart remote that when in universal mode for some reason will act as a 'play' button on all devices it is linked to as an universal remote. Never had an issue with it until Roku put the **bleep** Jingle Bell Love movie icon on the Roku home screen with the built in Press Play button. Stopped having issue once I turned off universal remote mode on Samsung remote. But Roku needs to dump the Press Play button on home screen icons as that is going to be an issue with folk using universal remote modes on other remotes.

[beezleb]

Thanks for this.  I was having the same issue and disabling the Samsung universal remote for Roku looks to have fixed it for me as well.  I couldn't use QMS because of this issue, since enabling that would cause random shows to start playing in Netflix too.

[chudan]

My solution regarding the Samsung remote is still working, it no longer tries to start the Xmas film de jour on the Roku Channel play link in the lower left corner of the Roku home screen. However, I still can't find a solution for the actual Roku remote starting it when I hit the Home button on the Roku remote. And this carried over to our new Roku 4850R after switching from 4800X. I am of the opinion that Roku is doing this intentionally to drive data up for their Roku Channel programming. We have resorted to requiring the Roku PIN to load new apps just to keep use of the Roku remote from hijacking our viewing toe the Roku Channel Xmas **bleep** show programming we don't want to watch.

[chudan]

Well, this is interesting. As mentioned above, was still having issues with Roku box pushing Roku channel installs anytime I opened Roku with the Roku remote when there was the push play ads in the lower left corner of the home screen. In a different forum (Reddit I think) someone suggested taping over the IR receiver on the Roku box because the Roku remote may be sending the play signal in IR. Everyone and their mom in the Roku support community says the Roku Ultra remote does not send Roku commands via IR to the Roku box, so I ignored the suggestion. Over the last few days, my Ultra suddenly stopped attempting to load whatever channel the Roku home screen was pushing in the lower left corner ad. At first I figured Roku finally listened and fixed the issue with the corner ads, so I was happy. Well, apparently one of our playful cats knocked a small box over in front of the Roku Ultra which I discovered last night. I moved the box and it's contents back to where it was and bingo, the ads started forcing loads of their related channels again. I put the box back over the Roku and it stopped doing it again. I then did some research and found out there is in fact an IR receiver behind the smooth plastic that surrounds the indicator light. So, I put a piece of electrical tape over it and it has been working great not pushing ad related channels for a couple hours now with me turning the Roku off and on. I am going to customize the tape to see if I can leave an opening to let the indicator light show through without letting IR signals to reach the IR receiver on the Ultra.

[RokuTakashi]

Hi, @chudan 

Thanks for posting here in the Roku Community.

We understand your concern with your Roku device that installs random apps, and we're here to help. For us to assist you in resolving the issue, our team would like to request the details below:

• When did you first encounter the issue?
• What troubleshooting steps have you taken so far in an attempt to resolve it?
• Have you tried unplugging the batteries on your remote for a moment to see if the Roku device installs apps since you mentioned that the IR on your remote sends a signal to your Roku device?

In the meantime, we recommend performing the troubleshooting steps below:

1. Press Home   on your Roku remote
2. Scroll and select Settings
3. Select System
4. Select Power. If you do not see a Power submenu, skip to the next step.
5. Select System restart

Roku device will complete a system restart and hopefully return to normal operation after a moment. 

Keep us posted.

Thanks,
Kash