Roku Player refusing to connect to WiFi Connection
 

Greetings, my parents bought a couple of years ago a Roku Player for their TV (which is an older flat-panel TV that came without Smart TV Software Built-in) and the Roku worked fine at their old house but as soon as they moved into their new house last year the Roku suddenly started developing WiFi connection issues, such as continuous buffering during videos and giving connection error messages when attempting to connect it to the WiFi connection in their home.
They do have Comcast/Xfinity High Speed Internet at their home with a modem that doubles as a dual-channel Wireless Router, if that helps any, with figuring things out.

I'm kind of at a loss at what might be going on with their Roku, because my Roku isn't having any connection issues and is still going strong yet, and I have the same kind of internet as my parents have at their house...:scratch2:

Any ideas as to what the trouble might be?

How far away is their Roku from the router? Could they have interference from a neighbor's WiFi using the same channel?

If you have a laptop with WiFi, you can install WiFi Analyzer to find out what's in the air there.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/wi...ot:overviewtab

A smartphone or tablet will also allow you to see neighboring connections, but I don’t think that’s the issue. The old house may have had a different provider/speed? Is the TV set connected to Roku by HDMI? If they have a lot of devices connected to their Wi-Fi system, it will slow the system down. Sounds like they have a reasonably good router, so you good try setting up priority to the Roku. That may help. I suspect the router is near the modem, which could be interfering. Try relocating or separating the devices. Try elevating the router or reorienting the router antennas, or an extender for a large home. You can download a speed check app to check speed of the Wi-Fi connection. If all else fails, try restarting both the router and modem, or pull the power plug on both devices for one minute.

As I read the OP, the router and modem are a combination in one unit, and
the Roku is connected by WiFi.

He said the set was not a smart TV?

Correct. The Roku is providing the services and is connected by hard wiring to the TV, but the Roku apparetnly is connected to the router by WiFi. Connecting the Roku to the router by ethernet would solve the WiFi problem, but maybe that's not physically practical - the OP didn't say.

That is correct. Could be a larger house, slower connection, to many devices or handshake problems. I’d also recheck the HDMI connection, and restart everything.

Their Modem/Router is in the same room as the Roku, in fact it next to their TV where their Roku is installed.

My mom works for a Hospice care company and so she does a lot of work from home, and so because of that she had to get one of the highest internet speed tiers from Comcast/Xfinity underneath their Business Class/T1 internet service, and the internet has no issues on her laptop or cellphones, just the Roku.

The house my parents live in now is actually smaller than their old house (their old house was a 2,000 Sq. Ft. Bi-Level from 1962 that the router in their old house was located in the room that used to be my sister's bedroom at one time, and that room was basically right in the middle of their house.
Their home they live in now is a 1600 Sq. Ft. ranch from 1997 that the only place they could put their router/modem was in their living room as they didn't have a cable hookup and phone line (for their landline telephone through Xfinity) in the room that my mom setup as her office in their new home, we've restarted the Roku and the modem/router numerous times and the Roku keeps giving us the same error message.

I don't have the capability to wire the Roku up with an Ethernet Cable.

Is there any reason why you cannot use WiFi to connect your Roku device to your router? I personally have no idea why this connection does not work for you. I don't know what Internet service you have, but that shouldn't matter as long as the connection speed is fast enough. I have Spectrum Internet, TV and phone service here, and it all works very well.

I don't know what part of Indiana you are in, though I am guessing it is the part of the state nearest to Chicago. If this is the case, you should be able to get Internet service from any one of the major carriers in this country.

I don't know what you mean when you say you "do not have the capability" to connect your Roku to your TV, using an Ethernet cable. This type of connection shouldn't be too difficult and is actually the best way to connect the device to your computer. There is a connector on the rear panel of the Roku player to which one end of the cable connects; the other end of the cable plugs into a similar socket on the TV itself. I could be wrong, as it has been quite a while since I used a wired Ethernet connection with my own Roku device (I connect the device to my TV using WiFi, which works very well). The only time I have ever used an Ethernet cable to connect my Roku to the TV was some time ago, and that just to test the Ethernet socket on my Roku device. My entire Roku system connects to my computer using WiFi and works very well. Never so much as five minutes worth of trouble with the installation.

1) Why not, if they're right next to each other?

2) Maybe the signal is too strong? try moving the Roku and router farther apart.

Perhaps try your Roku at your parents house? Possibly theirs got damaged in the move. :scratch2:

jr

The Roku has no Ethernet port, also I tried moving the router to the other side of the house and it still wouldn't connect to the Wi-Fi.

My mom ended up just ordering a new Roku.

My parents have Comcast/Xfinity High Speed Internet, I have that as well at my place.

The Roku itself will not connect to the WiFi because it thinks there's no internet connection to it, it keeps throwing an error 14.xx error message which basically means that the Roku thinks that there is no internet connection even though there is.

As for the ethernet connection, the Roku they have doesn't have an ethernet port built into it.

Well I brought my parents Roku over to my place and tried it out at my place and it worked fine at my place, so I don't know why it wouldn't work at their place anymore but it works fine at my place. :scratch2:

Does the new one work ok at their place?

jr

Try using your HDMI cable at her place. Disconnect hers and use yours. Also try repeating the Roku set up procedure/WiFi settings.

Yes it does.

Well like I said their old one works fine at my place and I was using all the original cables that came with it.

Curious. Do you have a combined modem/router or a separate modem/router at your place?

I have a combined modem/router just like my parents have, the only difference is that at my place we have the newer style Comcast/Xfinity modem/router that looks like a large cube that has the status lights on the top and my parents have the older style modem/router that looks like a large 3D rectangle with the status lights down the front..

Okay. I’m glad your parents Roku is working again. Still some unknowns. If their new house was older in years, they may have older style cable throughout the house. Or the internet signal might be split more times than the previous house. Some newer homes, but not all have Cat5 cabeling.

But since the new Roku is working with the same setup at your parents house and the old one is working at your house, I think the reconnection at your house removed corrupted RAM (memory) from the device. Also the reconnection at your parents house probably removed corrupted RAM from the modem/router. Sometimes the television is the problem and power cycling the TV will fix the problem.

Their house they just bought was built in 1997, their old house was built in 1962, there was some weird hacking done with the original cable runs in the house but my parents had that repaired when they had their cable service transferred from their old house to their new house because there were some cable hookups in the house that weren't working so the cable company came in and repaired the cable runs.

If your parents' former home was built in 1962, the cable wiring (not to mention the AC power wiring) is 60 years old and was probably well overdue to be upgraded (three-prong grounded AC sockets, et al). I don't know what was done to the original cable runs (you said they were hacked), but from what you said in your post, whatever was done must have messed up the wiring fairly badly; that, or else the original cable was reused, rather than being replaced with new cable as it should have been.

However, I was glad to read in your post that the problems were corrected and your folks are now enjoying cable service as it should be. The northern Indiana area is considered part of the Chicago metro, but I'm not sure Chicago's TV and FM stations reach the area as well as they reach the closer-in suburbs of the city.

I am in a similar situation where I live, in east-central Lake County, Ohio. I am some 30 miles from downtown Cleveland, and about 15 miles further southwest from the city's TV stations' towers; the TV reception here isn't bad except for the CBS station on channel 19, which was moved several years ago from channel 8 when the station was sold. For some reason, I don't know why, channel 19 simply does not reach here without cable.

I live in an apartment building, so cannot erect an outdoor TV antenna; this all but forces me to have cable to get decent TV reception (including CBS channel 19). When I lived in suburban Cleveland, the CBS station was on channel 8 until the late 1980s or early '90s, and reached my home at the time (Wickliffe, a Cleveland suburb 15 miles east of the city) quite well.

However, when I moved to my apartment in 1999, things changed drastically; that is, I could receive most of the stations, except CBS 19, well enough to watch, simply using an indoor antenna. As I said, I don't know why channel 19 does not reach here without cable. The studios are located in Shaker Heights, an eastern Cleveland suburb; the transmitter is located in Parma, a southwestern suburb, and so should reach the entire Cleveland area without cable. The city where this station's transmitter is located is in fact a Cleveland suburb, which the station should reach with no problems, using a simple indoor antenna. Since all of Cleveland's TV stations do in fact reach the entire metropolitan area (about 50+ miles), there should be absolutely no reason whatever why channel 19 should not reach my area.

Before DTV, channel 19 had a 3.762-megawatt (ERP) signal, and reached most of the metropolitan area (with the exception of far-eastern and far-western suburbs) quite well. I don't know, however, just how much coverage was lost after the DTV switch, but it must have been quite a bit since the station lost a lot of its coverage area from then on, and still has dead spots in its coverage area to this day. (A repeater station was installed recently to fill in the area where channel 19's DTV signal does not reach well, or at all.) To make matters worse, he transmitter was damaged by lightning about six months after the station's initial sign on in 1985; this may well have had something to do with the reduction in the coverage area (the transmitter may have been operating at sharply reduced ERP output after the lightning strike, and may still be to this day), but I'm not sure.