ROKU Box, DOA

[Sabot]

Our ROKU box died last week, after a few days of instability. It would sort of come on, display some mangled trash on the screen, then go blank. It's an older model, and could stand being replaced even if it continued working. We ordered the Amazon Firestick based on it's good reviews, and price. It's on back order, and won't even be shipped until the 19th of May, so for the interim, I decided to use a TPLINK WR700N pocket router I had laying around. I configured it for Access Point mode, then tested it on my computer before connecting it to the TV. It worked great. Once connected to the DVD player, as the TV does not have an ethernet port, everything works except Netflix. Netflix loads up, and displays our profiles, and all the movies and shows, it just won't play any of them. Amazon Prime works. You Tube works. Other streaming services work. Just not Netflix.

I reset the TPLINK WR700N, then reconfigured it. Same story. Other than just Netflix, it's great. I pulled my wireless adaptor from my computer, and I'm using the TPLINK in it's place. I'm streaming a couple of videos on different tabs, and playing a Facebook slot machine game on FB's dedicated game client right now, and it's working without any problems.

Anyone have any ideas on what I can do to get Netflix working? A wired connection is out of the question. It's the TPLINK, or nothing, until the Firestick is delivered.

[Angie]

Is it giving any error code or telling you that something is wrong when you try to play a video? Connection issues can be thrown out immediately, if everything else is working (which is great! I'll remember this if something happens with my ROKU stick). If it isn't, I'm not sure if we can get Netflix working, this is such a strange and one-time problem that figuring it out might take longer then when the Firestick comes in.

[Sabot]

Is it giving any error code or telling you that something is wrong when you try to play a video? Connection issues can be thrown out immediately, if everything else is working (which is great! I'll remember this if something happens with my ROKU stick). If it isn't, I'm not sure if we can get Netflix working, this is such a strange and one-time problem that figuring it out might take longer then when the Firestick comes in.

The error code it gives turns out to be a poor connection sort of thing. Which is just wrong, because it has a great connection. I have another blu ray player downstairs that I might try, even though it's built in apps for Netflix and Amazon are a bit unstable, and don't always work even with a direct ethernet connection to the router.

Internet service is fiber to home, 75 Mbs, so that is definitely not the problem.

[Sabot]

Update:

Tried the other blu ray player. Amazon works fine, Netflix refuses to play anything. Tried it on the downstairs tv, which was no small feat, as I had to dismantle it enough to remove it's built in wifi adapter. (It kept defaulting back to the adapter, even though it does have an ethernet port too). In this case, everything worked fine, including Netflix.

I've decided that the problem then lies with the blu ray players built in apps for Netflix, and as I understand things, they can't really be updated/upgraded.

Since the TPLINK adapter I was wanting to use is something of a kludge, taking a wireless connection, and converting it to wired for just a single device there might be some timing signals, or something that don't properly make the transition.

[Sabot]

The Firestick has finally arrived.

Hands down, this is an amazing little device. Alexa is a bit dodgy I think, as it keeps playing Deep Purple, "Smoke on the Water" when I tell it to launch netflix. Not sure this is a bad thing.

It's fast, faster than the hard wired tv. No buffering at all, or the little spinny wait widgets that otherwise pop up on all the other devices. So nice to have Netflix again.

The built in apps on our other things are crap compared to this.