White line static on Roku XD (2050x)

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1

I’m hoping this problem has been answered before. If it has please let me know. I have seen a few posts mention this issue; however, the threads seem to point to causes other than the Roku (see viewtopic.php?f=28&t=38268).

Let me start by saying that I love this product. I have invested heavily in Roku by installing one on every T.V. in my home. I now have about 8. I started purchasing the older Roku XD (model 2050x) and I have a few of the Roku2 XS (3100x model). Having a Roku on each T.V. has made it possible for me to cut cable service. I stream video to these devices using IIS 7.0 running on a windows 7 host. I don’t have any issues with this configuration other than the occasional wireless networking issues that users frequently encounter.

Several months back I started noticing Horizontal lines start popping up on the older Roku XD devices. It looks like some sort of interference as they pop randomly about the screen all over the place. It’s extremely annoying and I do not recall having this issue back when I got my third Roku XD. We started noticing this several months ago.

I’ve discovered that this only occurs when I am playing HD content at 1920X1080 on a television that is capable of 1080p resolution. I do not get this issue when I am playing 1280X720 content or anything lower.

I tried checking to see if this was due to a bad wireless connection by connecting via Ethernet. That did not solve the issue.
I tried checking to see if this was due to Power line interference and found that this is not the case either.
This problem occurs on all of the Roku XD boxes that i own so it is repeatable.

Even more interesting was the fact that I can plop in a Roku2 box on the same Ethernet connection, same location, attached to the same T.V. and when I play the same 1920X1080 content I do not have the horizontal line static. Because of that I do not believe that this is caused by RF interference or my content or the way it is served.

I read this post (viewtopic.php?f=28&t=38268) and confirmed that the behavior is much the same. The Roku XD devices are sending the 1920X1080 content to the TV as 1280X720 even though they are configured to use 1080p.

Any ideas?

2

Not too many responses here. From what I"m seeing here, I’m firmly convinced that this is another issue with the Roku that is going unresolved. It’s problems like this that are making me reconsider my choice of products for streaming. Despite what bells and whistles are added to it, none of that matters one bit when basic functionality goes to pot in under a year.

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The first generation of Roku hardware (everything prior to the Roku2) doesn’t have the same abilities as later hardware and can have issues with 1080p video. The horizontal lines you see are likely an artifact of trying to play something that they were not intended to play.

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RokuPatrick,
That response just doesn’t compute when the problem just started. I’ve seen it too and because the files used to work fine and suddenly now have snow, that would seem to indicate a problem with a recent update that was pushed to the older units.

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Whether it is a valid issue or not, this is the developer forum, not the general forum. If you are having issues with a channel you are personally developing, then please feel free to discuss that here, otherwise, if you are having issues with watching TV on Roku please move this conversation to the General Forum.

If you are a developer encountering this issue, please send me via PM the URLs of some videos that demonstrate the problem on the 3.1 platform and I’ll endeavor to have someone test them. It would of course be useful to know the brand of television on which you have encountered this as well and by what means it was connected.

  • Joel
6

“RokuPatrick” wrote:
The first generation of Roku hardware (everything prior to the Roku2) doesn’t have the same abilities as later hardware and can have issues with 1080p video. The horizontal lines you see are likely an artifact of trying to play something that they were not intended to play.

Wow. I’m really surprised at your response.
I distinctly recall that the 2050x model specs indicate that it was capable of playing content at 1920X1080 resolution on the box. What exactly are you referring to when you say> trying to play something that they were not intended to play..

Also, pay attention to the fact that the same video re-sized to 1280X720 resolution will not exhibit this problem. Same audio codec - same delivery mechanism.

Can you please explain what else you might be referring to? I’ll be happy to provide additional information on the video file.

7

“RokuJoel” wrote:
Whether it is a valid issue or not, this is the developer forum, not the general forum. If you are having issues with a channel you are personally developing, then please feel free to discuss that here, otherwise, if you are having issues with watching TV on Roku please move this conversation to the General Forum.

If you are a developer encountering this issue, please send me via PM the URLs of some videos that demonstrate the problem on the 3.1 platform and I’ll endeavor to have someone test them. It would of course be useful to know the brand of television on which you have encountered this as well and by what means it was connected.

  • Joel

Again, My contention is that this is not an issue with my channel based on the fact that the newer Roku2 does not exhibit this issue with the same content. To reproduce this issue, try playing 1920X1080 content on the older 2050x Roku using any television capable of 1080p resolution. I get this issue regardless of what the make and model of the television is (recall that I said I have 8 separate installations in my home).

Here are three TV model number that I have.

  • Samsung LNT3242HX/XAA
  • Dynex DX LCD26-09
  • Toshiba 40l5200U1

Thanks Joel.

8

“codewarrior” wrote:

Again, My contention is that this is not an issue with my channel based on the fact that the newer Roku2 does not exhibit this issue with the same content.

I didn’t say it was an issue with your channel, but if you have a channel that you are or have developed that is exhibiting this issue (regardless of the whether the cause is encoding or a firmware bug), send me the URL of a video that exhibits this problem when playing in your channel and we can test it. If the problem is with general video playback on the 2050x and is not specific to a channel you are developing, please use the general forum.

  • Joel
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“codewarrior” wrote:

“RokuPatrick” wrote:
The first generation of Roku hardware (everything prior to the Roku2) doesn’t have the same abilities as later hardware and can have issues with 1080p video. The horizontal lines you see are likely an artifact of trying to play something that they were not intended to play.

Wow. I’m really surprised at your response.
I distinctly recall that the 2050x model specs indicate that it was capable of playing content at 1920X1080 resolution on the box. What exactly are you referring to when you say> trying to play something that they were not intended to play..

Also, pay attention to the fact that the same video re-sized to 1280X720 resolution will not exhibit this problem. Same audio codec - same delivery mechanism.

Can you please explain what else you might be referring to? I’ll be happy to provide additional information on the video file.

While we did update the first generation HD-XR and XD-S to support 1080p video output, playing back video with a 1920x1080 frame size wasn’t something we promoted or marketed. Some 1080p-encoded video may indeed play just fine depending on encoding recipe. When you re-encode the file to 720p, you’re lowering the required cpu and memory for the decoding considerably (~1/2 the resolution per frame), and 720p encoded according to our encoding guide should absolutely play on all Roku HD-enabled devices.

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“RokuPatrick” wrote:
While we did update the first generation HD-XR and XD-S to support 1080p video output, playing back video with a 1920x1080 frame size wasn’t something we promoted or marketed.

Roku XD (model 2050x) Was promoted as supporting 1080p resolutions.
http://support.roku.com/entries/2034591 … yer-models

..resellers are also of this understanding as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Roku-XD-1080p-Str … B00426C56U

That’s what it also said on the box when I purchased it.

I guess maybe I made the mistake in assuming that 1080p video “output” wasn’t the same as supporting a 1920X1080 “frame size”? If that’s you’re argument then your just splitting hairs. I’m trying really hard not to be disrespectful here, but I’m not buying what you’re telling me.

A better approach here would be to say “Hey! that might be a bug. We’ll take a look into this matter, thank you for your feedback”. Instead, you’re trying to tell me something that just isn’t true.

Incidentally, I’m posting this on the Developers forum for the explicit purpose of calling attention to this matter for the sake of others in the development community that you guys are trying to foster, who will (and have) undoubtedly run into this problem. Posting this information as a PM doesn’t really accomplish that goal.

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Without some example content that produces this behavior, I can’t verify the existence of the problem and file a bug report. If you have some valid content that we can test please let me know.

The content needs to:

  1. actually be playable on the 3.x platform.
  2. cause the graphical issue you are reporting
  3. have not caused the issue prior to the last firmware update.
  • Joel
12

Posting a link to a file that exhibits the symptoms would help tremendously. Otherwise all Roku and other users can do is speculate about possibilities. With a sample, we can independently confirm(or dispute) the issue as well as examine the properties of the file for parameters that might possibly be triggering the issue. From there it might be possible for Roku to see what (if anything) changed in their code base, and from there they may be able to revert the change or at least explain why a reversion wouldn’t be possible(e.g. if it fixes other issues that take precedence over this one).

/edit: Missed Joel’s post as I was editing. Leaving mine up anyway :slightly_smiling_face:

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“codewarrior” wrote:

“RokuPatrick” wrote:
While we did update the first generation HD-XR and XD-S to support 1080p video output, playing back video with a 1920x1080 frame size wasn’t something we promoted or marketed.
A better approach here would be to say “Hey! that might be a bug. We’ll take a look into this matter, thank you for your feedback”. Instead, you’re trying to tell me something that just isn’t true.

In case you haven’t been reading the responses, I have quoted them here for you below - which from where I sit, it looks like that is what they have been saying, that it is possibly a BUG…
Quoted in the order posted

“The first generation of Roku hardware (everything prior to the Roku2) doesn’t have the same abilities as later hardware and can have issues with 1080p video. The horizontal lines you see are likely an artifact of trying to play something that they were not intended to play.” –meaning let’s look at a sample file to figure out what is going on

"Whether it is a valid issue or not, this is the developer forum, not the general forum. If you are having issues with a channel you are personally developing, then please feel free to discuss that here, otherwise, if you are having issues with watching TV on Roku please move this conversation to the General Forum.
If you are a developer encountering this issue, please send me via PM the URLs of some videos that demonstrate the problem on the 3.1 platform and I’ll endeavor to have someone test them. It would of course be useful to know the brand of television on which you have encountered this as well and by what means it was connected.

  • Joel" – Joel here is asking for a sample file

"I didn’t say it was an issue with your channel, but if you have a channel that you are or have developed that is exhibiting this issue (regardless of the whether the cause is encoding or a firmware bug), send me the URL of a video that exhibits this problem when playing in your channel and we can test it. If the problem is with general video playback on the 2050x and is not specific to a channel you are developing, please use the general forum.

  • Joel" – Joel again asks for a sample file

“While we did update the first generation HD-XR and XD-S to support 1080p video output, playing back video with a 1920x1080 frame size wasn’t something we promoted or marketed. Some 1080p-encoded video may indeed play just fine depending on encoding recipe. When you re-encode the file to 720p, you’re lowering the required cpu and memory for the decoding considerably (~1/2 the resolution per frame), and 720p encoded according to our encoding guide should absolutely play on all Roku HD-enabled devices.” – without a sample file this would be a possible troubleshooting step to see if the issue exists at a lower bitrate/resolution/resource footprint

I’m not judging whether anything said is true or not. What I noticed was with 1080p video playing in the custom video player using roImageCanvas (1280x720 canvas) on a roku 1, at a 4mbit encode rate, at 23.975fps with meta data set for HD/fullframe/24fps, I would see static lines through the video when using HDMI. When using component video cables the problem wasn’t noticeable, and when reencoding it to 1280x720 the problem went away - but it’s been like that for my setup even prior to latest firmwares (over the last year). Roku 2 doesn’t have the issue. I’m not saying it isn’t a problem, just without the ability to roll back firmwares here it will be difficult to track down without a source url video file to test on current firmware with any supporting information to go on like - a channel name, a video url, or more information about what you’re doing when you experience it on your end.

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I’m locking this topic.