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KmanAuto
Reel Rookie

Deploying 25+ Roku TVs at Family Resort

Hello everyone! 
We have a small family resort, one of the last Mom & Pop's in the Midwest's biggest tourist area, Wisconsin Dells ( www.SandriftResort.com ).  
I've been fighting my parents for a while now to upgrade TV's, however with the economy so down it was not Financially possible until now. COVID has been a unfortunate blessing in disguise, and we are now rocking it with our best two years in a row in 30 years!

So Out with the CRT's!!!!! In with the ROKU TV's!!!!

I will be deploying 25-ish TV's to start with. Currently, the boxes are under the laptop I'm typing this on, and my kids have already arranged them into a tunnel in our living room to crawl through and play Mario Kart Live through.....

As of right now, I've been working on the First TV, playing around with settings and channels to learn the quickest way to deploy. Setting up a one-off is no big deal, but the amount of time it looks like it will take to do 25+.... Is there a way to copy settings from TV to TV? Am I missing something here?

The Goal is to provide the TV's with Guest Mode. ROKU Really needs a HOTEL/MOTEL Mode for these TV's. 
This will be awesome, as Spectrum Cable is absolutely terrible with frequent outages. Getting really tired of it. Like clockwork. These people are on Vacation, they seem to prefer staying inside and watching TV.... Like clockwork, cable goes out, 15 people at the office complaining. 
Thankfully, with COVID last year, the terrible internet access was finally upgraded. Wisconsin Dells is a bit unique. It's a population of ~3500 people, so the utilities size everything for ~3500 people. That was Internet, Cellular, phone networks, just about everything. Yet, during the summer, Memorial Day through Labor Day, population jumps from that ~3500 to over 100,000 people. The Cellular network grinds to a halt. You "Might" be able to make a phone call, forget getting texts in under an hour, forget trying to get your email or google home page to load until about midnight. 
At least Spectrum finally upgraded the fiber back-haul to the area, so our 300 mbit internet finally works! (2019, would need to wait until after midnight to get anything above 500kbps on our 300 mbit business internet, and now it's finally a solid 300mbit). 

Anyways, caffeine'd up here, goal is for ROKU Live to be the backup to the Cable TV and eventual replacement. If we can ditch cable tv all together, looking at a savings of about $1000/month!

 

Thats all for now!!! Thank you! 

 

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renojim
Community Streaming Expert

Re: Deploying 25+ Roku TVs at Family Resort

There is no way to copy the setup from one TV to another, so you will have to set up each one individually.  Sorry.  Also, it's been reported that the maximum number of devices that you can link to one Roku account is 20, so you'll need more than one Roku account.  The good news is that channels/apps are linked to the Roku account, not the Roku device, so you'll only have to add them once per account.  With guest mode your guests will be able to add their own channels, so you probably don't have to go overboard with what you add.  25+ TVs streaming at once will strain your Internet connection, so I hope it's up to snuff.

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makaiguy
Community Streaming Expert

Re: Deploying 25+ Roku TVs at Family Resort


@renojim wrote:

25+ TVs streaming at once will strain your Internet connection, so I hope it's up to snuff.


Excellent point.

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KmanAuto
Reel Rookie

Re: Deploying 25+ Roku TVs at Family Resort

Thanks for the input! I think Roku is really missing a major opportunity here! I've also previously spoken to netflix for hospitality option as well, and they don't seem interested. 


Device limit is disappointing as well. 

 

As for the internet connection, I've actually done quite a bit of experimentation on that front based off the bandwidth demand of the 720p 32" ONN RokuTV's we will be using. 

For Roku Live streaming, the initial bandwidth requirement to fill the streaming buffer is about 5 mbit for 1-3 seconds, then it tapers down to 1mbit that is not sustained. It is more of a burst, so 1mbit for a half second then a half second nothing, then another 1mbit burst, rinse & repeat. So not bad at al! 

Netflix on the other hand, much higher quality picture. Now, back when we only had 2mbit internet, my old Vizio would pull a 1080P Stream that was of excellent quality believe it or not. Now that internet is faster, a "SuperHD Stream" pulls 7mbit at 1080p. 4k is 11mbit & 15 mbit-ish. 720 should be crystal clear at about 2-3 mbit. And it also varies depending on the content. Animated uses much less bandwidth. 

I've gone much more in depth with it. We get a lot of interesting folks visiting our place, and have gotten in some deep conversations with people of various backgrounds over the years (Just had a group of Tesla Engineers here a couple weeks ago, those at the campfire without a Tech background were like deer in a headlight haha). 


Now the hard part is the Wi-Fi. Now that Spectrum finally got the cities internet capacity up to par, we upgraded to an AWESOME ASUS AC1900 Router ( https://amzn.to/3wmU5s4 ). This thing is a POWERHOUSE of a router. This 4th of July weekend, our busiest most full weekend in YEARS, we had over 140 devices connected to the Wi-Fi and it was Rock Freaking Solid. I also went with this router due to the removable antennas. Upgraded to Two, 9db Omni's (3 pack for less than 15 https://amzn.to/2TIsGnh ), two of which are on the router, and the third antenna port I put a High Gain Directional ( https://amzn.to/3wtlkRV ) to help get the signal to the repeater at a lone cottage across the street. I now get 5ghz signal to all but a couple units that can max out our connection speed via my iPhone XS (I can peg about 295mbit via Speedtest.net App to a Chicago Server). The few remaining units that have spotty to no 5ghz signal, I'll connect the TV's to 2.4ghz, which IS very crowded here, as being directly on a small lake, you can pickup a good 50-60 access points in the 2.4ghz spectrum, but at least they are weak. I'd estimate 5-6 TV's on 2.4. Unfortunately, I do need to keep 802.11B/G backwards compatibility, so won't be able to utilize 40mhz & 80mhz bandwidth for 2.4. 


(START RANT): In 2005, back when our cable internet was 384kbps, the few people that had laptops only had ethernet ports, and 802.11b wifi was very rare (yes I had Wi-Fi available back then and loaner PCMCIA cards for those who had PCMICA ports), I actually INSTALLED Ethernet to each and every unit & Cottage..... It was a royal nightmare! but it was DONE.   Around 2012, my father decided to rip it all out without telling me.... His excuse that "No one is going to use that **bleep**"....... Well, sure would be NICE TO HAVE FOR THE DANG TV'S AS for a few $ more I could have gone with TV's that had Ethernet!....

(END RANT).

 

I DID discover one trick to help set tv's up quicker. Since the same remote works on all of them, I tried lining up 5 TV's in a small semi-circle. Powered them all on at the same time, and basically each button press on the remote mirrored to each TV. Got through all the initial setup that way, so basically was the equivalent of setting up one but getting 5 done. Not too shabby!

 

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renojim
Community Streaming Expert

Re: Deploying 25+ Roku TVs at Family Resort


@KmanAuto wrote:

Unfortunately, I do need to keep 802.11B/G backwards compatibility, so won't be able to utilize 40mhz & 80mhz bandwidth for 2.4. 


I hope the B/G thing isn't an issue, but Rokus don't seem to like the wider bandwiths anyway.

 


I DID discover one trick to help set tv's up quicker. Since the same remote works on all of them, I tried lining up 5 TV's in a small semi-circle. Powered them all on at the same time, and basically each button press on the remote mirrored to each TV. Got through all the initial setup that way, so basically was the equivalent of setting up one but getting 5 done. Not too shabby!


I love it!

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