Wi-Fi & connectivity

[TheMav]

And they have just totally screwed up Roku now, leaving all of us that suffer internet outages by our broadband / fibre providers without the ability to watch our own content from our local NAS devices.

Totally unjustifiable that Roku's streaming sticks will non longer allow an App like Jellyfin to connect to the local network and stream your content without an internet connection.  Why?  What justification is there for this?  It's not like we can watch any of your streaming content either when there is no internet - or hadn't the 2 year olds with no common sense employed by Roku realised this?

Whoever dreamed this little nugget up should be hung, drawn and quartered.

That's it from me - We've had multiple Roku devices for years, but no longer will we be buying these now as a result of this stupid recent requirement.

Yes, even with superfast fibre in 2024, there is no escaping rats, hornets, wasps that have totally destroyed the underground fibre optics.  We are on our third outage in 2 months and because of the ridiculous update by Roku I can no longer connect to my own server on my own local network to stream my own content.  Thanks a lot for nothing.  These devices will be consigned to the bin forthwith.

[RokuJohnB]

Hi @TheMav,

Thank you for your first post here in the Roku Community!

We want to investigate this issue you had with the Roku device since it will not connect to your wireless network connection. Can you please provide the following information below?

• Did we recently make any changes to your network or network provider?
• Is the issue happening on all contents/channels or is this isolated to 1 content/channel? (Specify)
• When trying to connect to your network, what do you see on your screen? (before entering the network credentials)
• How far is your device from your network router?
• Do you have cellular data so we can try connecting your device to your hotspot?

In the meantime, you may check out this support article here on how to fix internet errors and issues on your Roku streaming device.

We look forward to hearing from you soon and gathering your details.

Thanks,
John

[rmilling]

I uncovered an underlying issue with the Roku ultra (latest updates installed): configuring for wireless fails when Internet service is not reachable via wireless.

scenario: Internet is down. Trying to reconfigure Roku ultra to use wireless so I can access my Tablo device that is on the same wifi network. This is my go to setup to watch local TV via OTC antenna during a storm. Worked great in prior storms.

issue: now, Internet is out but setting Roku to use wireless gets partway (makes wireless connect) but fails when checking Internet. That leaves the wifi connection setup incomplete and the Tablo app on Roku useless!!!!  

question: how do I get Roku ultra configured for wireless with having Internet access?

[TheMav]

What is happening is that I'm connecting the ROKU to the Access Point that doesn't have Internet access. It passes the wireless connection test, but doesn't pass the internet test. That is fine and is as I would expect.

What I didn't expect and didn't realise was happening is that after the WiFi test,  ROKU will drop the entire wireless connection so when I go back to the Jellyfin client and tried to have it connect to the local server via it's IP, it would fail.

I'm not concerned about other channels as these are all internet streaming channels and I'm not in the least interested in those.  It is the local connection to the local NAS that hosts Jellyfin, on the same WiFi network either 5GHz or 2.4 GHz.  And yes, my Smart Apple Home devices work (in basic mode - switching on or off) on the same network, although anything advanced like scheduling that requires Internet of course won't work.

Even when selecting the 'Proceed Anyway' option when it does not detect WiFi does nothing.  Jellyfin Roku App will not connect.

And one further thing, I can easily connect to the Jellyfin App on my iPhone via the same WiFi network (again with no internet access or cellular data connection) and play movies from the NAS, so this is a Roku issue.  You need to stop this nonsense and allow connection to network devices regardless of internet access or not!

[AvsGunnar]

@TheMav 

This started happening a few updates ago (maybe OS10 or so).

As long as you avoid running the connection test (or trying to connect to a network which performs this test automatically), you can usually still use the RMP/DNLA servers through Roku without internet access.

Roku could disable the auto-test feature, but I haven't seen any movement in this manner since it was was first brought to their attention.  Since Roku is an internet streaming device, I don't think too many offline network features are of much concern to them.

When I am having internet issues/disruptions, I just connect an alternative means (laptop) to the TV via HDMI to access my network content/Jellyfin, etc. if I am not watching antenna TV.

[TheMav]

Thanks for confirming this as a Roku issue.

Appreciate your comments about Roku being a streaming service, of course that's why we bought them for everything the Smart TVs no longer do once they're no longer updated.  It's just that when we have fibre infrastructure outages, one expects to be able to continue to use the same Jellyfin App as normal on the local network server without these ridiculous and unnecessary Roku interventions.  It serves no purpose to prevent this and just p*sses everyone off for no reason whatsoever except to annoy users.

I appreciate your suggestion, but that would be too much hassle given my complicated home AVR setup and access issues, so I will have to look at alternatives as this is unacceptable to me.  If something annoys me like this, I'll have a rant, but will also follow through and look for an alternative device like an NVIDIA or similar.  I often find my own movie and series collection has far more offerings than anything streaming! - once I've got the fibre back up to do some research that is.

Cheers anyway, at least I know that they're unlikely to bother with fixing it - that's their loss.