2015 General Conference streaming issues to Roku

We are in Alabama and watch general conference on our Roku 3 which normally works really well. However, we are having problems watching conference today. The Mormon Channel continually says it cannot connect to the server. The BYUtv channel will play for a while and then either display "loading, please wait" or just kick us out with an error. All of the other Roku channels, such as Youtube are working fine and load content almost immediately. I did a speed check and I am getting 20 MB down and 12 MB up. I can stream to our PC on the church website with no problems.

Is there a problem with the servers feeding the Roku apps? This is really unusual and frankly annoying. Really want to watch conference on our TV.

I am not sure if others are having the same problems.

I know this is late, but did you try going to the LDS General Conference channel in the YouTube app?

Our Roku 2 worked flawlessly today on the BYUtv channel. sbradshaw's suggestion is a good one.

Thank you for the responses.

I tried to view the Youtube streaming broadcast but it would not play. I had never tried to view a streaming program before using the Roku App so I am not sure if that problem would have existed either way. The screen would just stay blank and did not look like it was even loading. Maybe its not supported yet by the app??? It would work on my laptop with no problems to steam through Youtube.

We were able to watch most of the sessions on the BYUtv app. It would stop about every 20 minutes and buffer (i.e. "loading, please wait") for about 2 to 5 minutes but it was better than nothing at all. Between sessions I tried to use the Mormon Channel app a few more times and it would always say there was a server problem and nothing would come up.

I am going to try again today for the Sunday sessions and report back on how things go.

Some background: We use the Mormon Channel App and BYUtv App weekly in our house. Both apps normally work wonderfully well and things load up immediately. This is why I tend to think something else is wrong. It leads me to believe that the servers are getting overloaded which is why we can't get it or are having the long buffering problems. I did try restarting the Roku (did not change anything) and tried using other app content and the other apps worked fine.

We were experiencing very similar problems all day yesterday and half of this mornings session with Mormon channel and BYUtv on my Roku as well. I connected it to an Ethernet cable and since doing so haven't had any problems so far. We have been streaming without interruption now for the last 20 minutes. Remember that wireless G is only capable of delivering data at a theoretical max of 54mbps. That's without any interference. Wireless n And ac offer faster transfer speeds but reduce wireless signal strength. Also, think about all of the other wireless device trying to connect to your home network as well. Not saying this is the absolute cause of the problems, but it helped my situation.

jdseamons wrote:Remember that wireless G is only capable of delivering data at a theoretical max of 54mbps. That's without any interference.

Interference could be a neighbor's WiFi that's on the same channel. Or it could be something invisible to WiFi applications, like a microwave oven, a 2.4GH cordless phone, etc. "Hidden transmitter" issues can create problems as well.

That's why wired is always preferred.

Interference could be a neighbor's WiFi that's on the same channel

Can one choose another channel? If so, how would this be done? Also is it important to reset my router?

On Sunday we were not able to watch the morning session using the Roku. We were watching Music and the Spoken Word on the BYUtv app on the Roku and then right as the session started it went into the "loading, please wait" mode and never came back. The Mormon Channel App would not open saying that it could not connect to the server. We watched the morning session on lds.org with no problems on our laptop.

I tried again to use the BYUtv app for the afternoon session and we were able to watch 95% of the session using the app with very few problems. The "loading, please wait" message came up a couple of times but miraculously only lasted for about a minute each time. Right at the end of the session during Elder Nelson's talk it stuck on the "loading, please wait" and we switched to lds.org again to finish the session.

This evening after dinner we got onto the Mormon Channel app and watched some of the Mormon Messages and a full feature film of President Monson's life without issue. It seems like the current servers that support the Mormon Channel app on the Roku are maxing out during conference. Over the past few days the only problems I have seen with the Mormon Channel app have occurred during the General Conference broadcasts.

marknlawson wrote:It seems like the current servers that support the Mormon Channel app on the Roku are maxing out during conference. Over the past few days the only problems I have seen with the Mormon Channel app have occurred during the General Conference broadcasts.

Thanks, Mark.
That seems to make sense. The past few conferences, we start off using Mormon Channel, but eventually have to switch over to BYU.