It was Tuesday the night of August 15th and I wanted to watch the HotCut, Mets at Yankees. As I noted in my log entry for that night, I encountered significant difficulty trying to stream the game.
It was the game where Andrew Miller gave up a couple of big home runs, one to Manny Machado and one to Nelson Cruz. The game was in Miami (I think). The crowd was going nuts and my internet was apparently on the fritz. It was especially vexing because I had a few friends over and we were all sitting there watching the game. I called Charter out the next day. The Charter guy said that some water had gotten into whatever device is on the utility pole out in the back of my house, thereby affecting the internet connection. I am dubious of this explanation, for reasons I will soon explain.
The problem manifested itself in a similar way on August 15th during that SubwayCut. The stream kept cutting out; the display would go to the mostly blank black screen with the word "Loading..." and a bar showing the loading progress. It would then start streaming the game again sometimes only for a few second before it went back to "Loading...". I take this process to be similar to the "Buffering..." message I get on my MLB At Bat app when I am streaming just audio using either my iPhone or my iPod. Something was clearly wrong. I dreaded another call to Charter. I went on Twitter and sent out my first tweet of the year, describing in a caustic tone how MLB.TV was unusable and noting Disney's recent takeover of majority control in MLB Advanced Media.
I tried to use the Set Up disc that came with the router but it was somehow incompatible with my laptop operating system. No big deal. I went online to the router manufacturer's website and began to pick through the process of trying to figure out if the router could be set up in a different way so as to alleviate our WiFi congestion.
In prior moments of poor streaming I would go and unplug the router and/or the cable modem. There was also a little button on the back of the router that I thought was some kind of reset. The button has two little arrows arranged in yin/yang fashion. In fact that button is not a reset button at all and the times I hit it thinking I was doing something useful are laughable in hindsight. I'm not really sure unplugging it did all that much good either, although it is possible that it temporarily masked the problem.
There is a legitimate reset button on the bottom of the router, which I pressed and held, forcing the router to reboot completely. The reset resulted in the router losing the name we had put on our WiFi connection and I had to go into my WiFi settings to re-find the connection so I could have my laptop talk to the router. The WiFi connection at this stage is public and not secure. I then went into my browser and entered the IP address for the router as a sort of URL (the address is just numbers, a default address I found on the router website). A page comes up in the browser that allows you to start acting like an administrator and set up the router however you want.
I came across commentary online suggesting that the Roku 3 has a strange relationship with its own remote. Basically the Roku itself is a sort of router that maintains a WiFi connection with the remote. This connection is set to mimic the connection the Roku in turn keeps with whatever router it is getting its WiFi from, potentially causing problems. I believe that when we sat near our Roku (in front of the TV!) with our phones or pods or laptops there was a lot of noise and traffic and interference gumming up our WiFi causing the Roku to struggle in streaming MLB TV. When I had three friends over the night of that World Baseball Classic game, there were four phones in the vicinity of the Roku and it is quite possible that WiFi interference caused the problem that night, Charter having nothing to do with it at all.
If you are out there struggling with your MLB.TV streaming quality or your MLB At Bat audio feed, it could be that you need to reset your router and set it up differently to optimize your network. If you have a Roku (especially a Roku 3, apparently) it could be that your problem is one of WiFi congestion and not a problem with either your Internet provider or your content provider.
Streaming Problems
My internet provider is Charter. From time to time I would experience drops in our WiFi that I tended to blame on Charter. The first big fail I pinned on Charter was back in the spring, when I wanted to stream the World Baseball Classic. I am subscribed to MLB.TV and I use a Roku 3 to use the MLB.TV streaming app.It was the game where Andrew Miller gave up a couple of big home runs, one to Manny Machado and one to Nelson Cruz. The game was in Miami (I think). The crowd was going nuts and my internet was apparently on the fritz. It was especially vexing because I had a few friends over and we were all sitting there watching the game. I called Charter out the next day. The Charter guy said that some water had gotten into whatever device is on the utility pole out in the back of my house, thereby affecting the internet connection. I am dubious of this explanation, for reasons I will soon explain.
The problem manifested itself in a similar way on August 15th during that SubwayCut. The stream kept cutting out; the display would go to the mostly blank black screen with the word "Loading..." and a bar showing the loading progress. It would then start streaming the game again sometimes only for a few second before it went back to "Loading...". I take this process to be similar to the "Buffering..." message I get on my MLB At Bat app when I am streaming just audio using either my iPhone or my iPod. Something was clearly wrong. I dreaded another call to Charter. I went on Twitter and sent out my first tweet of the year, describing in a caustic tone how MLB.TV was unusable and noting Disney's recent takeover of majority control in MLB Advanced Media.
Starting Over with the Router
Yet there remained the possibility that something was wrong with our WiFi router. The next morning B and I talked about just getting a new WiFi router and hoping that would fix our troubles. But I also knew that I had no idea how our router was initially set up—was it set up correctly?I tried to use the Set Up disc that came with the router but it was somehow incompatible with my laptop operating system. No big deal. I went online to the router manufacturer's website and began to pick through the process of trying to figure out if the router could be set up in a different way so as to alleviate our WiFi congestion.
In prior moments of poor streaming I would go and unplug the router and/or the cable modem. There was also a little button on the back of the router that I thought was some kind of reset. The button has two little arrows arranged in yin/yang fashion. In fact that button is not a reset button at all and the times I hit it thinking I was doing something useful are laughable in hindsight. I'm not really sure unplugging it did all that much good either, although it is possible that it temporarily masked the problem.
There is a legitimate reset button on the bottom of the router, which I pressed and held, forcing the router to reboot completely. The reset resulted in the router losing the name we had put on our WiFi connection and I had to go into my WiFi settings to re-find the connection so I could have my laptop talk to the router. The WiFi connection at this stage is public and not secure. I then went into my browser and entered the IP address for the router as a sort of URL (the address is just numbers, a default address I found on the router website). A page comes up in the browser that allows you to start acting like an administrator and set up the router however you want.
It's a Dual-Band Router!
The router we have is a dual-band router, pretty standard. But I don't think we had been taking advantage of both of the available frequency bands. There is a 2.4 GHz band and a 5 GHz band. I set up a distinct WiFi network for each band such that we now have two WiFi networks in our house, both attributable to the same router. I gave each network its own name. Now if I go into the WiFi settings on one of our devices I can decide to connect it to either of two networks.Giving the Roku Its Own Network
The 2.4 GHz band has a wider physical range while the 5 GHz band is better for streaming. I went into the Roku WiFi settings and connected the Roku to the 5 GHz band. It said the signal strength of the connection was poor but it was able to see it and connect nonetheless. Every other device is connected to the 2.4 GHz band such that the Roku has the 5 GHz band all to itself. I think this was key.I came across commentary online suggesting that the Roku 3 has a strange relationship with its own remote. Basically the Roku itself is a sort of router that maintains a WiFi connection with the remote. This connection is set to mimic the connection the Roku in turn keeps with whatever router it is getting its WiFi from, potentially causing problems. I believe that when we sat near our Roku (in front of the TV!) with our phones or pods or laptops there was a lot of noise and traffic and interference gumming up our WiFi causing the Roku to struggle in streaming MLB TV. When I had three friends over the night of that World Baseball Classic game, there were four phones in the vicinity of the Roku and it is quite possible that WiFi interference caused the problem that night, Charter having nothing to do with it at all.
Fingers Crossed
Occasionally I will still get a "Loading..." proviso on MLB TV while watching a game but these router changes seem to have cleared up the trouble I was having with MLB.TV. The other problem I had before was getting a feed that though it was live i.e. streaming it was not HD in quality. I am getting the non-HD feed much less often now as well. Interestingly, the audio streams on my phone or iPod also seem to hit the "Buffering..." snag a lot less often since I made the router changes.If you are out there struggling with your MLB.TV streaming quality or your MLB At Bat audio feed, it could be that you need to reset your router and set it up differently to optimize your network. If you have a Roku (especially a Roku 3, apparently) it could be that your problem is one of WiFi congestion and not a problem with either your Internet provider or your content provider.
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