Roku Device Features, Settings & Updates

[Januari]

How can I stop Roku from changing the display type? We have Comcast, and have a data cap. In December, Roku updated, and without our knowledge changed all four Rokus back to 1080p, which cause us to have a $50 overage on our cable bill. By the time we got notification that our bill would be charged an overage, it was too late, and was only half way through the month.

Now I've been trying to remember to check, to make sure that Roku doesn't reset the Display Type, and cost us another $50, without our consent. Today, I checked. Low and behold, all four Roku's have reset their Display Type back to "Auto Detect" which is 1080p. 

This is unacceptable, and not affordable. How can I turn off this behavior, or at least, stop Roku from updating on it's own, so that we are aware when this behavior happens. 

Thanks. 
Januari

[dgrace]

Unless I'm really misunderstanding this, the display is just that, how content is sent to your tv, not what you are consuming in streaming. If you are on a data cap you have to really watch what you select to view, and when possible, like with netflix, go to your account with them and change your preference to standard definition.
Not roku's fault.

[atc98092]

in addition to what dgrace mentions, there is a known Roku issue with the display reverting to auto. Again, I don't think it impacts your streaming speed, but they are working on it.

[daveaf]

AFAIK the resolution does affect the data rate as the Roku requires the additional data to output a 1080p picture

We purchased an Express to replace one of 2 XS's that failed and are having the same problem on our bedroom 720p set

Dave

A lot or 2XS's, one XD and one Express (maybe the last)

[mike_s]

I don't think any (reasonable) RoKu app is going to pull a stream with higher resolution than the output (unless that's all that's available), so I'd expect it to have an impact on bandwidth used.

[Januari]

How it's sent to our TV's, is directly related to how much data we're consuming. To get that crisp 1080p picture, about 3 time's the data is consumed vs. 720p. For instance, in Netflix it's about 0.7 GB/hour vs. 3 GB/hour. I can be a huge difference, and if not caught in time, totally screw us.  

I don't see the point of Roku having a setting for display resolution, if it randomly changes and costs the consumer in overages. 

Sadly, the only way I know that all of 4 of our Roku's have been reset is because I'll get a Data Usage Alert from Comcast. I currently have it set to alert us at 50%, which should give us time to reset our Roku's, but if it happens too early in the month, we're screwed. 

[beq]

I feel your pain, Comcast has been enforcing the 1TB data cap here the last few months, and we've been going over since we'd upgraded to 4K streaming.



Last month I had to start adding Comcast's unlimited data option for an extra $50/mo (more like $60-70/mo after taxes/fees)!

P.S.  During Comcast outages, when we connect Roku to a mobile hotspot (with limited high speed data cap), we do manually switch the Roku display type to 720p, thinking that would enforce lower bitrates across the board?

[Januari]

Beq, yes setting Roku to 720p does reduce the data usage across the board, which is the difference between staying under 1TB, and going over 3 fold.

[hackztor]

"Januari" wrote:
Beq, yes setting Roku to 720p does reduce the data usage across the board, which is the difference between staying under 1TB, and going over 3 fold.

And most people are not even at 4k yet and are hitting the caps..

[wytcld]

Looks like an "upgrade" to the Roku software a few months back broke the ability to make the user setting stick, rather than reverting to the Auto function -- which misreads my TV as 720, so letterboxing the picture top and bottom until I reboot the Roku to fix it. There needs to be a setting to override the automation permanently. Roku should fix this.