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ROKU

 About 3 years ago we purchased a ROKU stick to do some streaming. We usually watched ACORN that had the Murdock Mysteries and Foyle's War, but it wasn't until the pandemic came around that we started binge watching. Brokenwood, Pie in the Sky, 800 Words, Rake, Mystery Queens, Whitstable Pearl, just to name a few that was on the menu.

Everything was great until Saturday when in the middle of one show an alert showed up on screen.

"ROKU is overheating".   I didn't know that could be an issue. Doing a Google search I found that it was a quite common issue. The most common cause is the location of the 'stick', ours was in the back of the amp for our home theater and being very close to the air vents it wouldn't dissipate the heat properly. The fix is to locate the 'stick' further away from other sources of heat. I had another HDMI cable that was long enough to put the 'stick' on top of the cabinet but I quickly realized that I had connection problems.

The 'stick' looks like a large thumb drive, it has a male connection. The amp has a female connection and my cable had 2 male ends. So the cable can plug into the amp but I had 2 male ends for the final connection. Unfortunately mechanical connections do not follow modern social mores. These final 2 connections will not work. So I had to wait until Sunday morning to go to the local Best Buy and get an HDMI extension cable. 'Extension' meant a male on 1 end and a female on the other. Now it worked, the 'stick' is on the top our cabinet staying warm (not hot).

Of course I just couldn't let this go so I decided to add a heat sink on the 'stick' to see if it would lower the temperature even more. Using an empty coffee bag, I cut the foil with little legs sticking out and wrapped it around the 'stick'. 



This actually works, the 'stick' is even cooler now. The problem is, it looks like we overlooked some of the tinsel after we packed up our Christmas decorations or even a left over fire cracker from the 4th of July. I have a feeling that Patti will demand it's removal when she gets home.  







  

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  1. RonaldAugust 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM

    You are right. She will not like it. At first, I thought it was a Chinese finger puzzle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Far Side of FiftyAugust 3, 2021 at 9:04 AM

    We used to have a Roku and enjoyed it very much, now we have a fire stick. Possibly your wife will come up with a different solution:)

    ReplyDelete

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