Channels & viewing

[Tivoburkee]

BN, this thread is only dealing with Roku tv's, if you have antenna attached to your roku tv and what to pause live tv you have to have a flashdrive attached to the roku tv, its supposed to give you 90 minutes of pause time. I have never used it myself and I own three roku tv's. 

[atc98092]

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@Jayaro wrote:

Like others mentioned here, I had the best luck with a micro SD card and a USB adapter.

Recently I tried a brand new sandisk 32gb flash drive and it couldn’t keep up. Then I put the old micro SD card back in and that was having problems again. Part of me thinks it’s software related too.

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The SD card is only used for channel storage. It has nothing to do with pausing streams from YouTube TV or any other channel. As @Tivoburkee mentioned, Live TV pausing can only be done with a Roku TV, and it requires a USB drive connected to the TV. Connecting a USB drive to an Ultra (or any other Roku with a USB port) can only be used for playing media from the drive. The Roku player cannot use it for any other purpose.

Any channel that offers pausing a live broadcast is using their servers as the storage location, not the Roku itself. Roku devices don't have sufficient storage memory for saving anything that is streaming. Roku devices has two sets of memory: operational and channel storage. Again, adding a USB drive cannot be used to compliment either set. For devices that have an SD card slot, it only supplements the channel storage, and does nothing for the operational memory, and has nothing to do with pausing live TV.

[Drewtooth]

So frustrating. It worked for weeks. Then it stopped exactly as you described it. resuming from pause it speeds up to catch up to live TV. Erasing and Reformatting the USB in a computer doesn't help. Nothing helps. Disabling screensaver didn't work. 

[otawatcher]

The number of re-writes ruins the usb sticks beyond repair. You need to replace the usb stick, I used a high endurance sd card and an adapter and it has been working for months. 

[boogernose]

That sort of pausing and restarting is not supported on every Channel.

You can always get a DVR device like Tivo or Tablo. And work off a recording

Buy I cant speak to those like @Tivoburkee  or @atc98092  can.

But I am curious What they have to say about them.

[atc98092]

I would agree that it's likely a failure of the USB stick after so much activity. Obviously, the first test would be to try a different stick. 

I have a Windows 10 PC with a TV tuner as my DVR device. Naturally, it's not something that we can use to pause or back up a live broadcast. But then we watch live TV so seldom it's not really an issue for us.

Since Microsoft discontinued Media Center, I had to search for the best software replacement for it, and I finally found J River Media Center. With some customization (and great assistance from their forum) it completely replaces the functionality I had with WMC. While it is not free, it's an excellent DVR package. And it can serve as a DLNA server as well, for streaming to your Roku devices. Since I use Serviio, I don't use that function. And VideoReDo is excellent for editing out commercials. 😄

[salado]

I have a TCL Smart TV (with Roku built inside) I put in a 32GB 3.0 thumb drive in 5/30/2019 - I saw the message for the 1st time Monday on OTA (live tv) ... "My USB live pause will be disabled.. go to a roku.com/livetvpause" (the page was #404) However the next day I turned off the TV first.. took the USB out of the TV put it in a Windows 7 pc. and did a format on the thumb drive. Its now Friday, and I have seen no USB messages & the live pause works...  it may happen again? or its a longshot, that it works.. all I ever got was 90 minuits even though the USB thumb drive is a 32GB & not a 16GB...   will post back if the message comes back...... good luck

some may want to try a search here: https://forums.tomsguide.com/?t=15992621333908

[givitumee]

I agree with some other users that the best equipment to use here is actually not a USB flash drive as they aggressively are pushing but rather a cheap old school hard drive (HDD) in an external USB hard drive enclosure with its own power source. These are the kind of drives that dedicated DVR equipment use internally for years.

[JD73MB]

The only thing that worked for me was buying a new USB stick (a 32 GB Sandisk Ultra). The glitches/resets reduced dramatically after that. I would say it only happened about 4 more times in April/May. Then it happened again on June 20th, we missed the ending of America's Got Talent when it jumped to live tv after the show had already ended. The Masked Singer and football are starting up again so we'll be watching a lot more Fox, and that was the channel giving us the most problems before. I'll report back if we start having issues again.

[givitumee]

@JD73MB 

The issue you're talking about is a hardware issue with the physical USB drive you are sticking into the TV. If you are able to solve the issue, even temporarily, by just sticking in a new/fresh USB drive it's a hardware issue. These TVs will eat through USB drives, especially cheap ones, because USB flash drives have a limit to how many times they can be written/rewritten.