Roku outage shows the dangers of overly connected smart TVs

Roku outage shows the dangers of overly continued smart TVs

Roku remote with a Netflix button among others in front of a TV.

(Prototype credit: Shutterstock)

Did your Roku stop working the fashion information technology was supposed to on Wednesday night? Well you weren't the only one, thanks to some serious disruption to the company's services that rendered Roku devices and Roku TVs pretty much useless.

Users took to social media and the Roku subreddit to report their problems. Meanwhile Down Detector shows the problems began at around 7.thirty p.grand. ET and lasted for most four hours.

Roku outage graph on down detector — (Prototype credit: Dowm Detector)

Meanwhile, Roku acknowledged the problem at around 8.30 p.m. ET. "Roku is enlightened of an issue reported by users who are unable to access some Roku services," it said on its community forum. "If you are trying to activate your device, please try again later."

The company later appear at i a.k. ET that they believed the situation to be resolved. However, in that location was no confirmation equally to what caused the outage, and why it affected Roku devices the way information technology did.

Plain the situation is worse for people with a Roku TV. Not being able to use your streaming device is very abrasive, but not as abrasive as the fact your TV won't boot up due to problems beyond your command.

Some users even reported that they couldn't use any TV input, including cablevision boxes and DVD players, despite the fact they have absolutely goose egg to practice with Roku.

Beloved @Roku when is this outage going to be fixed?! I did a reset on my TV non realizing it was a Roku outage that had acquired it to freeze. Now I tin't set my tv support to access my Blu-Ray actor. Nada. Until I can access my Roku account….tonight at dwelling is superb…January 20, 2022

Some Services = All Services. Can't even spotter my ain cablevision provider or any input to the tvJanuary 20, 2022

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If a streaming stick suffers connection problems you lot can e'er do something else, such as play video games or watch traditional TV. If your whole Tv set fails, y'all're essentially up the creek without a paddle.

Fortunately, some people did find workarounds, including switching the TV to 'shop mode,' or unplugging the Ethernet cablevision to disconnect the unit of measurement from Roku servers. Unfortunately, that concluding i would only work if you had a hardwired TV connexion in the first place.

Here's hoping, for the sake of Roku TV owners everywhere, that the visitor realizes this is a problem and fixes information technology. That doesn't end farther outages affecting the bodily streaming attribute, but when you lot're consuming content that relies on the internet there isn't a huge corporeality yous can do about that.

Tom is the Tom's Guide's Automotive Editor, which means he can unremarkably be constitute human knee deep in stats the latest and best electric cars, or checking out some sort of driving gadget. Information technology'due south long way from his days every bit editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He's usually establish trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of java, or complaining that Ikea won't let him buy the stuff he really needs online.