Playback Issues - Audio/Video & Power

[daknecht]

My Roku 4 tonight suddenly only shows the initial ROKU splash screen on the TV but never gets to the Home screen.  I have powered it off and on several times with the same result. Anything I can try?  Is it dead?  

[RokuDanny-R · Accepted solution]

@daknecht 

Thanks for the note.

Do you happen to have a micro SD card in your device? If so we would recommend removing the device and restarting before adding the micro SD card back.

Please keep us posted.

Thanks,
Danny

[daknecht]

It worked!  Thanks so much.  I did not put the card back in yet.  I got periodic notifications that something would be improved with the micro SD card inserted.  So I put one in a month ago.  But I can't tell any difference in performance.  What is it supposed to do?

[RokuDanny-R]

@daknecht 

Thanks for the update.

I'm happy to hear that you're back up and running

Adding a micro SD card allows you to expand the amount of internal memory available for installing channels and games from the Roku Channel Store.

For more information about micro SD cards, visit our Support page here: How do I increase memory with a micro SD card?

Thanks,
Danny

[Elke]

I removed the memory card like it said above and it finally worked.  Thank you so much

[atc98092]

As a detail: the SD card does nothing for overall Roku performance. Because it increases channel storage space, if you have a number of channels it might improve the channel loading speed. But only if it's a channel that hasn't been used for a while and Roku had offloaded the channel for a more heavily used channel. The Roku 4 (4400) had 1.5 GB of memory storage, at the time the most of any Roku player. So unless you have a large number of channels and regularly use them all, the SD card is of little value. I have never used on on any of my Roku devices, and I have I believe about 55 channels installed. And I use maybe 4 of them on a regular basis.

[andyross]

According to the Wikipedia article, the Roku 4 has 512M for channel storage. The 1.5G is system memory. For reference, older Express models are typically 256M, Premier's and newer Express have 512M, and older Ultra's 1G. It looks like the latest models (3940, 3941, 4800) have 4G. The Streambar is only 512M.

[atc98092]

You're correct. I mis-read the column with the information. That Wiki shifts the columns around for different generations and I glanced at the wrong column. Thanks for the correction.