Poor playback performance on Roku apps

[trevoragifford 1]

I've noticed poor playback performance on the Roku apps that has progressively gotten worse. It has recently gotten nearly unusable on Roku for me. 

When I select a title for playback, the app will sit and buffer on 13% for 30 seconds to a minute before actually starting playback. In some cases it will then be playing with video and audio out of sync, and I'll need to 'Attempt playback correction' 1 or 2 times, which also takes a while to process. In other cases it will look like it has started playback, but it will just be a black screen. These are direct plays on the local network. It seems to be worse for movies than shorter tv episodes.

On other client apps (iOS, Chrome Web Browser), playback starts nearly instantly. It only seems to be Roku I'm having issues with.

I've attached my embyserver log, and I sent the logs from Roku after triggering the issue. User Trevor attempted to start playback of '28 Days Later' at 11:58 AM ET on 10/7/2026. If any other examples are needed/wanted, I will be happy to provide. Thanks for any help.

embyserver (2).txt

Edited October 7 by trevoragifford

[Luke 43542]

Hi, is this on a remote connection? What is the quality setting in the app set to?

[trevoragifford 1]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

Hi, is this on a remote connection? What is the quality setting in the app set to?

No, this is a local connection. It is set to Auto

[ebr 17031]

Hi. Are you sure that log had the issue?  It looks like from click to playback start is about 2 seconds...

2026-10-07 08:40:04.335 Info MediaInfoService-0HNP3R0G05KCF:00000041: http/1.1 Response 200 to host4. Time: 3ms. POST http://192.168.40.157:8096/emby/Items/394519/PlaybackInfo?UserId=x_secret5_x&mediasourceid=mediasource_394519&starttimeticks=00000000&audiostreamindex=1&isplayback=true&autoopenlivestream=true&maxstreamingbitrate=80000000&subtitlestreamindex=-1. 
2026-10-07 08:40:06.430 Info VideoService-0HNP3R0G05KDF:00000001: http/1.1 GET http://192.168.40.157:8096/emby/videos/394519/original.mkv?DeviceId=09509377-910a-5c8e-9e82-60bb0d8821cc&MediaSourceId=mediasource_394519&PlaySessionId=b55674b5e9ca4126a9541e9287489831&api_key=x_secret6_x. Source Ip: host4, Accept=*/*, Host=192.168.40.157:8096, User-Agent=Roku/DVP-16.0 (16.0.4.821-30)
2026-10-07 08:40:06.701 Info PlaystateService-0HNP3R0G05KCF:00000043: http/1.1 POST http://192.168.40.157:8096/emby/Sessions/Playing. Source Ip: host4, UserAgent: Roku/DVP-16.0 (16.0.4.821-30)
2026-10-07 08:40:06.703 Info SessionManager: Playback start reported by app Roku SG 4.1.70 on Trevor's TV playing 28 Days Later.

And from the app side, from the first buffer to playback starting is less than a second.

[ebr 17031]

What you describe, however, is a delay in delivering the file to the player from the server.  The 13% is an arbitrary number Roku seems to pick that basically means it is waiting on the first part of the file.

Typically, this is due to either network issues or perhaps a delay in accessing the file - like a drive needs to spin up.  I don't see any evidence of a delay in the logs you provided though.

[Luke 43542]

Also what software created the mkv? If the file has missing or incomplete header information then this can cause the player to have to fetch more of it before it will start playing.  And that can vary per player depending on the way that it’s built, so the fact that you’re only seeing it on Roku doesn’t rule that out.

[Luke 43542]

@trevoragifford?