Remotes

[Mfelton3]

Okay so I have a streaming stick plus a few months back our remote quit pairing.. I have done every step available to pair it. New batteries, different types of batteries, soft reset, unplugging, trying to repair the remote.. so I hard reset it and now it is stuck on the launquage screen and cant pair the remote I put the batteries back in and the remote just flashes and flashes forever.. I ordered a brand new remote and still stuck on the lauquage screen and the light on the new remote just flashes what do I do I am to the point I'm gonna just throw it away. I'm so frustrated it's only a year and half old.. help pls

[RokuDanny-R]

@Mfelton3 

Thanks for the post.

If you are still unable to resolve the issue, please send me a PM with your Roku account email address, and include the serial number/device ID on the Roku device along with a summary of the issue you are experiencing. I'll be able to assist you further from there.

Thanks,
Danny

[Flaymsbane]

I've also started having this issue as of 11/12/20, two days in a row. It's a 3800X Roku Stick and an RC-AL2 point anywhere remote pair that I've had about 2 years and haven't had this issue before yesterday. Batteries are fresh and internet is working fine. The only thing I can think of is that it's just gotten cooler where I am, low to mid-60s during the day and 40s overnight.

[Phoenix74]

Almost exactly a year ago I bought a Roku streaming stick for my Samsung Smart TV.  It worked fine until yesterday—I didn't have to touch it once, except to change the batteries in the remote.  Oddly the original batteries lasted most of that time, but the replacement batteries were starting to go after a couple of months.  Last night the remote wouldn't work at all, even though it supposedly still had enough battery power.  Changing the batteries did nothing.

I tried everything I could find on the Roku troubleshooting pages, and was rewarded for unplugging the streaming stick and plugging it back in again by the TV refusing to recognize that there was anything plugged in at all.  I went around and around in circles until I managed to break the streaming stick.  I bought a brand new one today and set everything up.  The new remote paired up and it seemed to work fine... until I actually tried to watch something this evening, and the remote wouldn't work.

I repaired the remote and watched a program.  At the end of the program, the remote was unpaired again, and I couldn't stop Roku from autoplaying a random program I didn't want to watch... later on I tried to watch something else and had to start from scratch.  This time I had to disconnect the streaming stick, then the TV didn't recognize it was connected, then I had to repair the remote again.  I watched a program and the remote was unpaired again by the end of it.

Having to repeat every step over and over for no good reason is so frustrating it makes me want to scream—especially when I didn't have to touch the thing once for a whole year.

[RokuDanny-R]

@Phoenix74 @Flaymsbane 

Thanks for the posts.

As stated in my previous post, if you are still unable to resolve the issue, please send me a PM with your Roku account email address, and include the serial number/device ID on the Roku device along with a summary of the issue you are experiencing. I'll be able to assist you further from there.

Thanks,
Danny

[Phoenix74]

A week after sending all of the requested data, no reply—not even a "we're working on it".  But one thing that's almost helped: I don't have to keep unplugging the streaming stick and hoping that the TV knows it's there when I plug it back in again.

All I have to do is open the battery compartment on the remote, slide one of the batteries partway out, and then back in—and the remote works for a minute or two.  No more endless attempts to pair that last for the same amount of time if they ever finish—about a minute.  But it's a pain in the neck to have to open the battery compartment, slide a battery out, and push it back in *every time* I want to hit "pause" or "play" or "home".  Especially if I've got something else in my hands to deal with.  I missed a phone call tonight because it took too long to pause the loud program I was watching.

Remote controls should be one-handed—and thirty years ago they were not only one-handed, but kept working even after you put them down and picked them back up again.  What's next, a remote you have to keep plugged in to the TV on a cord?

[Sweet1]

I have the same problem, but just bought the unit today!

[Phoenix74]

Well, I got some suggestions from tech support, but not sure they made a lot of difference.  However, at the moment it's working correctly.

It doesn't seem to be an issue with signal strength, since the remove worked fine before, and fresh batteries didn't make a difference.  Following the normal steps to re-pair the stick and remote didn't achieve anything.  But for a while this worked: I'd remove one battery from the remote and put it back.  For a short period I could use the remote—usually long enough to get to whatever channel I wanted and choose a program.  If I set down the remote for any length of time, even a minute or two, it'd be unpaired again.  It was a pain to have to open the battery compartment and remove a battery every time I had to pause or stop play, but at least it worked.

Recently the advice had to do with resetting my router to the preferred channels—I believe I just had to set the 5GHz channel to 161.  But again, this was all about signal strength, so it achieved nothing, except that I had to spend a couple of hours trying to access my router's channels and working with Frontier tech support to do it.  Since it didn't solve the problem, Roku tech support was going to send me a new remote—but since it happened with both the old and new remotes, it didn't seem likely to me that it was a faulty remote either.

I was about to tell them that, but figured I needed to test the old remote before I did—and in order to do that I had to unplug the streaming stick and re-pair it to the old remote.  And oddly enough, that seemed to work!  I've used it two or three times since then, and haven't had any issues with the remote not working the first time, or after sitting for a few minutes—or a whole program.  So maybe there's a fault with the pairing software that makes some units fail to accept pairing repeatedly—but just some of the time.

If it happens during a program, just removing a battery and putting it back in may jog the remote—but if it's not working at the beginning, it looks like you may just have to keep going through the pairing process until it takes—i.e. remove the batteries, unplug the streaming stick, wait a few seconds, plug the streaming stick back in, put the batteries back in the remote, press and hold the pairing button, and wait for the light in the battery compartment to flash brightly and the remote to pair with the streaming stick.  If it doesn't pair after a minute or two, you might need to try again.  I just hope you don't have to go through what I did the first time, with the TV refusing to recognize that the streaming stick was plugged in after being unplugged.  Good luck!

[Jerrodr]

I’ve been having the same issues for the last month. Nothing short of frustrating. I bought a new remote and it does the same thing.

[Phoenix74]

Okay, so just in case this helps, I finally resolved the problem.  I had to go through the pairing process from the beginning: unplugging the streaming stick as well as removing the batteries from the remote, then pairing up.  I'm not sure whether it always works, or if it fails some of the time, but I haven't had to do it for a couple of months now.  If it unpairs again, I just go back to the beginning.  If you try the pairing button in the remote without restarting the streaming stick, it usually unpairs itself after a minute or so, and you have to keep taking a battery out and putting it back in again.  It's frustrating to have to keep doing that, so it's easier just to go back to the beginning.

Fortunately, power going out doesn't seem to affect the pairing.  But if you don't get the remote to pair successfully, and try to do it while the streaming stick thinks there's a remote paired to it—that it just isn't hearing—then the remote will actually keep trying to pair constantly (the light by the pairing button will keep flashing), and drain the batteries in a few weeks instead of months.  So as annoying as it is to try to remember how you paired them when you first got them, that seems to be the only process that usually works.

I also note that usually the remote takes a few seconds to work once I get to the "home" screen—at first I think it's not working, but then if I wait a few seconds, it does.  So I think this is a software issue that Roku needs to work to improve—but at least it's possible to get the remote working again if you go through the whole process from the beginning.  Also helps that the TV hasn't refused to recognize that there's a streaming stick plugged into one of the HDMI ports, the way it did the first time I encountered this issue and tried to repair the remote.  Not sure why that happened, but possibly unplugging everything from the HDMI ports and unplugging the set for a minute might help, if anyone encounters that.