Solving playback issues

[Anonymous]

" It's just bad programming"

It's good programming since it's having the intended result, preventing users from circumventing geographic restrictions. Get it now? 

[PrinceLH]

It's not up to Roku to police regional circumvention of services.  That's up to the pay services, who really don't care who they sell their services to.  The Roku channel has no live sports, so what's the issue?  We have too much censorship in the media and on the internet.  If the FCC has a problem, let them police it.

[Anonymous]

What are you, 12?

[Strega2]

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@PrinceLH wrote:

It's not up to Roku to police regional circumvention of services. 

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The Roku community guidelines seem to disagree since they include: “Discussions regarding any usage of VPNs to circumvent established regional broadcast rules or limitations are not allowed in the Community."

TV is generally a business. As such, TV content has complicated licensing including things like: geographic limitations, calendar times, number of showings per day, time(s) of day, what “tier” something is in, commercial slot sharing, how it is marketed and on and on.  If a show/channel happens to have commercials, then obviously it is necessary for those commercials to be effective in whatever markets are seeing them.  Such a thing generally fails with a VPN which is one of the reasons that many companies block VPNs as they are discovered.

[PrinceLH]

Who are you?  Another Democrat heavy?

[PrinceLH]

OK. I tried going with my VPN and no luck.  I used my regular modem with no VPN and no luck.  I redone my router and put on a new VPN and no luck.  Roku.....it's your issue!  Fix it already!!

[PrinceLH]

Another week, another week without the Roku channel.  All of my other paid services are up and running, but not the Roku channel.  I will continue to comment on this until they fix their product.  Some people say it's VPN router driven, it's not.  It's just **bleep**ty software.  The programming is good, if you can actually watch it.  I'm sure that I'll be back a week, a month, a season from now.  Really, it's an embarrassment.  I'm glad that I don't own stock in this company.  Unfortunately, I've invested time and money on the hardware and I really think it's ridiculous.  Carry on snoozing Roku.  As I update my equipment, it won't be with Roku equipment.

[PrinceLH]

Another Day, another week/month and going on a year without the Roku channel.  Still no fix for that app for many.  It's starting to look like they're targeting VPN users because heaven forbid, people watch TV from a different state or country.  Roku won't come out and say it, but my best guess is that it's exactly that.  Geoblocking is just bullsh!t.  They should just come out and say this exactly what they're doing.  Spineless!

[AvsGunnar]

@PrinceLH 

If you are trying to connect directly to your modem (no router involved), then an issue probably lies with your ISP (or their DNS servers).

Connecting directly to the modem should allow you to directly connect your Roku device to the internet and allow the Roku Channel to be streamed.

When you connect directly to your modem, go to Settings/Network/About.  Does the reported IP address look like your public IP address? (ie. if you use a browser and check your IP address though  https://www.whatismyip.com/ and similar sites, this "public IP" should be matching what is showing on your Roku device).  On other modems, (if it has a simple DHCP server), may actually assign a LAN IP (ie.192.168.0.1 and similar) to the single LAN ethernet port but still use the ISP DNS servers.

I think Roku was whitelisting some ISPs (and their DNS servers) when users started issues viewing the Roku Channel.  As others have indicated, most VPNs will not work with the Roku Channel. (some will).  If you want to view Roku Channel, users will simply have to disable their VPNs.

It is what it is.  Unless you know how to get around it, the reality is that partnerships and agreements have been made that steps will be implemented to protect content and licenses by the studios and services.

Describe your actual setup.  Are you sure the first in line is just a modem (and not handing out DHCP addresses) in addition to your router handing out addresses?  Provide some model numbers of your equipment and any network addresses you see. (no need to know your actual public IP address), but if your modem is actually a modem/router and you are using with another router and they are all using the same Gateway (LAN IP), you may just have a double NAT issue going on that is affecting the Roku Channel.  Also, post your DNS addresses (and verify that the connection is actually using the DNS addresses specified in router and not being redirected).

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If you want to troubleshoot the Roku Channel issue, feel free to reply with as much info as possible and can see what we can come up with and try.

If the nature of the complaint is about the inability to view the Roku Channel while using a VPN,  won't be providing any info on circumventing that.

[PrinceLH]

So, what you're really saying is VPNs are not welcomed on Roku and you are participating in Geo-blocking paying customers because they want to watch programming from a different state or country with the current technology.

Being in Canada, very close to the U.S. border, we get our over-the-air TV from the United States.  Same for radio stations.  If we use the Roku channel with our Canadian modems it will give us the Canadian programs or a scaled down set of Roku channel movies and TV shows.  But if you put on a U.S. VPN, you can lift the Geo-blocking on most streaming services, but not Roku.  So, all of the people dealing with this same issue are being penalized for wanting to be able to watch U.S. based programming, none of it sports related, so there are no regional rights issues for sporting events, put can't watch Grit, or some other U.S. based movies or TV shows.  Nice.