Channels & viewing

[halifaxsteve]

I have a roku premier m/n 3920CA, and just installed the HDHomerun app and get the malformed data error.  Only happens on this app.  Any fixes yet? 

[RokuERey]

Hi @halifaxsteve,

Welcome to the Roku Community!

We appreciate you for sharing your experience about this. We're here to help. Could you tell us when you observed this behavior occur? Have you tried any troubleshooting and what didn't work?

Let us know more about this so that we can further zoom in on it.

Thanks,

Rey

[makaiguy]

This is HDHomerun's app, created, provided to Roku, and maintained by HDHomerun.

HDHomerun support page: https://www.silicondust.com/support/

[halifaxsteve]

Seems some work others don't (2) Roku + HDHomeRun : Roku (reddit.com) Mine doesn't

[halifaxsteve]

From Reddit: 

NedSD : SiliconDust employee 

The Roku version is basically just a web-based UI that sends everything to the Roku video player. All "apps" on Roku use this Roku video player. Only Roku can update the code for that portion.

Interesting side story on Roku, things are weird right now for Roku. Roku released a new SDK that might open the door to us having our own video player code, and being able to fix things like the DVR playback bug, or possibly having PRIME support, rewind on live TV, and so on. However, Roku then said that this new SDK is only for private use, and they wouldn't accept app submissions that use the new SDK. But that's weird, why go to the trouble of supporting a new SDK if you have no intention of accepting apps that use that SDK? Maybe Roku will accept those apps in the future, but they are waiting to see what developers do with the new SDK? We're really not sure what's going on there. Things could be soooo much better on the Roku, but until Roku (the company) allows it, there's not much we can do. It's a platform mainly made for streaming services, rather than OTA.

Good news, the Fire TV 4K stick should be working better. Within the last week or so, the dev team fixed another issue, so give the app another try. We blacklisted the hardware MPEG-2 decoder in our app, which means the delinterlacing isn't the best for interlaced channels, OTA is watchable now.

[renojim]

I have a HDHomerun Quatro and the SD app works equally well/poorly on the multitude of Roku devices I have.  The problem is that if there's the slightest glitch or dropout in the RF signal the tuner passes it on and Roku devices can't handle it.  Playback stops and I may or may not see the "malformed data error" message.  If you see any glitches at all when you watch via another device like a computer then you can bet the Roku is going choke.  I've spent a lot of time adjusting my antenna and trying different amplifiers and I've still achieved marginal results at best.

A few weeks ago I got a Tablo TV device to check it out and I have to say that while the Roku app has its share of problems it's still a better choice if using a Roku device to watch live TV is your goal.  In addition to it being more reliable as far as not dropping out it also supports pausing and rewinding live TV.  Now if they could just add the thumbnails when rewinding live TV I'd be happy.

[farmhouse1512]

Same issue here.  And it was never this way.  What a Pain.  If anyone has found a fix, please share.  

[RokuEuniceL]

Hi @farmhouse1512,

Greetings from the Roku Community!

We understand you are also having issues with the HDHomeRun app with malformed data error messages, and we appreciate you posting about this. We would be delighted to help you further.

For us to better understand the issue you are experiencing, please provide us with additional information:

• When did the issue occur?
• Have you tried updating your software to the latest version?
• Have you tried removing the app, restarting your system, and adding the app again?

Let us know how it goes, and we will continue to assist you further.

Kind regards,

Eunice

[Bonfire]

I also am experiencing the malformed data error, as I’m sure everyone else is who has tried to use the HDHomerun app on Roku. It is totally crippled by the Roku player that silicon dust is forced to use because this platform is so locked down.

I reached out to silicon dust and confirmed. Their recommendation was to get rid of the Roku in favor of a device that works. They apparently implement their own player on other platforms, but this isn’t possible on Roku.

No amount of troubleshooting is going to resolve this issue. The HDHomerun just takes the raw signal and streams it to the HDhomerun app on Roku (no transcoding or anything). The Roku player chokes when there is an interruption in the stream due to signal issues (weather can easily exacerbate this). When the malformed data error is hit, the player crashes with no recovery, so you just get a frozen last frame.

There is nothing wrong with the HDHomerun, this is 100% a problem with Roku. It’s kind of shocking that the platform is so locked down considering how long this company has been around. Basically don’t plan to use a HDHomerun with a Roku, unless if you are going to proxy the stream through something like plex.

I’m sure Roku could solve this a number of ways. Examples:

- Make the player ignore the malformed data and continue to try to play the stream. This would allow it to eventually recover.

- Implement callbacks that tell the app that the stream has crashed and give it the opportunity to retry playing the stream until it eventually recovers.

- Expose APIs for app devs to implement their own player. This seems like the best option and is in line with other platforms  

Considering returning my Roku Ultra.

[renojim]

@Bonfire, Roku devices definitely don't play well with HDHomeRun receivers, but I don't know why the SD app doesn't restart the stream.  If they can receive the "malformed data" error and display it, they can certainly restart the stream.  Even with that, I don't think the experience would be very good with anything less than a rock solid signal.  I've played with my own app receiving the stream and restarting it when there's a problem, but every time it restarts the stream there's a few seconds where it has to buffer again, so it's practically not worth it.  My signal seems to be either rock solid or glitchy all too often depending on the channel, weather, the RF gods, etc.  The frozen last frame thing is different and while I've seen it, it's the "malformed data" error that I mostly see.  After playing with my antenna over and over again, I have a pretty good signal on all but one channel, so I just choose not to watch that one live.  🙂  99% of my OTA watching is after being recorded anyway.

I wouldn't expect Roku to do anything about something they can't figure out how to monetize with an on-going revenue stream.  It's become apparent that they're not really all that interested in selling new devices as much as they are in trying to figure out how to get money out of the millions already out there.  Not to mention, I doubt 1 in a thousand users have any idea what an HDHomeRun box is even if they're aware that antenna TV is still a thing, which also seems to be rare these days.

I've always felt that if your main reason for getting a Roku device is not to stream from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, etc. and you're not willing to put up with its many limitations when trying to do anything else, there's probably better alternatives out there.  Don't get one with the hope that these kinds of things will be fixed in the future.  I don't see them putting any effort into it.