Restricting bandwidth

[gateley]

I'm having trouble with Internet access speed on my local network when the Roku is playing. I have a DSL line, and the Roku takes almost all my bandwidth. Is there anyway to force the Roku to choose the lowest quality?

Anyone else have this problem? It could be related to my other problem with DHCP addresses.

Thanks,

j

[Mark12547]

There is an undocumented way to lock in a given bit stream.

Using the remote, hit Home Home Home Home Home Rewind Rewind Rewind FastForward FastForward (that's 5 Homes, 3 Rewinds, 2 FastForwards), keypresses about 1/2 second apart. You may have to try several times and the trick is to make the keypresses spaced out far enough. (Remember, the last two are <<< Rewind and Fast Forward >>>, which are on the bottom row of buttons, not the < and > keys to the side of the select button.) This will take you into debug mode. On this screen you would see something like this:

Code: Select all


NETFLIX                       bit rate override

Select a stream speed below to override the automatic stream
selection. This setting will remain in effect until you reboot the box.

      enable playback debugging []
                      automatic []
                       2.2 Mbps []
                       1.6 Mbps []
                       1.0 Mbps []
                       0.5 Mbps []
                            back[]




You can select the bit stream that you desire. The bit rates correspond to picture quality of 4 dots (2.2Mbps) down to 1 dot (0.5 Mbps).

As I said, the "debug mode" keystrokes are not documented, neither is this screen. That means it might change in the future and, if a microcode upgrade is loaded (which forces a reboot of the box), you may have to go back to this screen and set the mode again.

The good news is that the worst damage you can do on this screen can be undone by rebooting the box.

[teddman]

Awesome tip. I would actually like to do the reverse, locking in the 4 dot quality setting. I get it 95% of the time by default anyway. Are there any downsides to doing this?

[wingnutzero]

Only down side I could see is if your bandwidth gets clogged for any reason, I imagine the stream would stop frequently to rebuffer rather than just switch to a lower quality (but uninterrupted) feed.

[Mark12547]

Awesome tip. I would actually like to do the reverse, locking in the 4 dot quality setting. I get it 95% of the time anyway. Are there any downsides to doing this?

The down side would be if the network (or Netflix server) is congested, you may see several instances of the screen stopping and the box refilling its buffer, which can be quite distracting. (If you try rewinding to try to play over the section where the box had previously stopped, when you hit Play the box will reload its buffer again before starting to play.)

I suppose that if you start getting hit by several buffer reloads during the playing of a feature, you could pause the action several times at your choosing and let the incoming stream top off the buffer. The advantage of you doing it is you can pause at logical spots whereas the Box would just pick when its buffer is empty in spite of it being mid-sentence or mid-explosion.

I haven't actually tried turning on the diagnostic messages, so I don't know if there would be any screen display to warn you if the buffer was getting on the low side. However, if watching a good movie, one usually doesn't want to divert half one's attention to keeping a hand on the switch.

[aegl]

Turning on the diagnostic messages just gives you a pop-up window for a few seconds when you start playing a movie that tells you what bandwidth the Roku box just measured and if you aren't using the highest quality stream what the problem is. The bandwidth needed for each quality appears to be an average value ... so you may see a diagnostic like this: "Cannot play 2.2Mbps stream on your 2.4Mbps connection because at 2:40 need 7.6MB in 20s (3.0 Mbps)"