Seeking faster loading and better time out control streaming device

I am using Firesticks to control streaming access to my TV's but find that I spend a lot of time waking up the "next" device and TV and moving through the steps to get to where I was when I move from one room to another.

There are four problems:

1) number of steps to get to the exact place I just left off when I changed rooms

2) speed at which the streamer moves through these steps starting with wake-up

3) "sleep mode" sets in too quickly on the streamer/device when I leave a room

4) seemingly no amount of adjusting settings on streamer and/or tv cures #3

I would like to replace the Firesticks with streamers which can cure some or all of these issues.

What do you recommend? Thanks

My Roku device allows me to stop the steaming and can restart with one click up to 2 hours. After

2 hours I would have to do a couple more clicks to restart the streaming. I think that is what you

want to know....right?

Roku Express | HD Streaming Device for TV. Low Cost. | Roku   ($25....the device I use)

Buddy, Thanks for yours. My streaming service is YouTube TV (YTTV) and I had a  Roku stick as my first streamer. At that time (apx 2 yrs ago), Roku was feuding with YTTV and you had to go through several extra steps just to bring up YTTV. The YTTV channel could not be seen as one of the "instant" app choices. You had to move left to the various options (Search, Settings, etc) lined up vertically, click several times to get down to the bottom of those, click on YTTV, and (maddeningly) click on confirm as if you didn't know what you were doing. That took a lot of clicks to get me to where I start with the Firestick.

For that reason I abandoned it and went to Firestick. Because it was then my first streamer, I never got to the point of moving room to room with the Roku as I would have had to buy more Rokus and didn't like all those extra steps. (BTW, I think I read somewhere that Roku and YTTV had sorted things out and I assume those extra steps have gone away.)

I am a financial analyst and keep CNBC on all day on three tv's (in different rooms) throughout the daytime. For various reasons, I have to change rooms often, and so am trying to improve these issues.

Are room to room transitions quick (only 1 click within that 2 hour window)? About how long does it take to bring up on the new screen where you left with the previous?

Just to be sure I understand, are you also waking up your TV with the one click?

Also, what happens after 2 hours? Does it go into sleep mode, then must be waked up? And if so, about how long in seconds or mins does that take? Or what happens after 2 hours?

Finally, when you first turn on your tv during the day, how long does it take you to get to an individual channel (and if you have CNBC, specifically how long to bring it up?) Thanks again

You still have the Roku device...right? So, plug it into one of your TVs and do a comparison.

I consider my TV and Roku device fast and very reliable. I only use one of each so I can't

tell you what you will experience on 3 TVs. My Roku device is always powered on. Not affected

by the TV being powered on or not. That speeds up startup to a few seconds.It connects to an

electrical outlet and a hdmi connection to TV. I gave a link to the one I have.

Unfortunately I no longer have the Roku stick, but if I remember correctly, there wasn't much speed difference between the two.

I am not familiar with other choices of competing devices, and am hopeful that there are many on this forum who have had experience with a wide number of streamers, perhaps including less well known models, who can and will weigh in with guidance on speed of operation.

The best case is a streamer that can be set not to sleep (the Firestick seems to ignore the "Never Sleep" setting) so that when I move to another room so that the TV there is still on when I get there and I can just pick up the controller and turn the sound back on.

Second best case is a streamer that allows me to much more quickly than the Firestick and the Roku to move the several necessary several steps to get back to where I left off in the room that I just left.

I use my TV remote to control sound volume....not my Roku device. Can't you just simply

use the TV remote to control the sound volume for those TVs?

Not sure I understand about volume. No problem there. What gave rise to your comment?

It is the streamer and/or tv going to sleep that is the problem. Getting back into an active mode requires many steps and too much time.

If all you are doing is muting the sound on TVs and not stopping the video and it goes to sleep

then I think that shouldn't happen. I can mute the sound of my TV or just turn down the sound volume

and the video or TV program will continue until I intentionally stop it.

If it happens on all 3 TVs then I would think those Fire Sticks are faulty.

What are you using to control the sound.....the TV remotes or the Fire Sticks' remotes?

Edited by buddy215, 27 January 2023 - 06:00 PM.

Buddy, you have solved my problem.

Until now, I have always just stopped what I was watching and so that when I opened in another location, it would open at that point.

But what I had not realized is that stopping the current program was what was causing the TV and Streamer (that I left) to go to sleep after only a few minutes.  And I had never found a way to keep it from sleeping using every combination of settings that I could think of.

I did not want to let the program I was leaving continue because when I got to the next location, I wanted the program to continue from the point last watched

So I just changed the channel to CNN (which had the effect of pausing the program I was, and wanted to continue watching), muted the sound, and left  it running. When I came back to it whether after just a few minutes or even hours later, CNN was still running, just silently. So it only took a couple of steps to change to the channel I was last watching and wanted to continue watching, picking it up at the point I last watched. This is a much quicker process than going through all the steps required to wake everything up and get back to where I was.

Thank you for your suggestion which was the solution.

P.S. I wrote the above yesterday, and only as an experiment, left all the TV's running all night. Eventually all the TV's went to sleep after several hours. But that is fine, because I normally turn the TV/streamers off at night anyway. I still have to jump through all the hoops when I get up, but that sure beats doing it multiple times each day