I signed up for ESPN+ through the apple store, so it works on my phone. When I sign in to the Roku ESPN app it doesn't recognize my ESPN+ subscription. Do I need to have two separate subscriptions?
You need to link your ESPN+ subscription to your ESPN account on your phone. The Settings tab of the ESPN app on your phone should have that option. Then you should have the option to log on to your ESPN+ subscription on Roku after that.
Well I just got home and tried to pull up the Blackburn game on ESPN+ on the Roku. After 2-3 of loading, even if I don't select a video, the new ESPN Roku app just crashes. Tried installing and uninstalling the channel, no change. Watching the game on my iPad now. Technologically this ESPN+ rollout has been a disaster. I know Disney has had issues lately but I'm shocked that a high-profile rollout like this can have so many problems. This clearly wasn't ready for prime-time yet.
Just a little info. So far my ESPN+ on my Rokus has performed flawlessly. I never (at least almost never) watch live. I just tested and I can stream the Blackburn match without problem. Just as to help diagnose the problem: I am using a Roku Ultra and a Roku 3. All connections are wired. My down speed is about 30 mbs at its worst. I am in Tennessee in the US. I have Charter as my ISP. The problem you describe could be related to an out of memory problem but a lot depends on which Roku you have. The new ESPN+ app was written with the new programming tools and video player that Roku provides and that requires one of the newer Rokus. Rokus from the Roku 2xs on back will, probably, not work well. Rokus that should work are: The new Roku 1 (it may have problems due to being the weakest Roku in the current line and being wireless only) Roku 2 (it is wireless only but its more powerful processor might make the difference) Roku 3 (Wired is best for this but wireless should work OK) Roku Ultra (The most powerful of the current Rokus. It should work well wired or wireless but wired is best) If you are running one of the Rokus with an SD card slot and you have a card installed you might try it without the card. Also when you uninstalled and reinstalled you need to have rebooted the Roku in between otherwise the local cache was not cleared and there could be something screwy in the cache that is causing problems.
Roku Premier+ which was the "current" Roku just a year ago when I bought it. If the new ESPN app can't handle that that's a problem with ESPN, not me. When I got ESPN+ setup on it on Monday(?) it was working fine. Streamed whatever the live baseball game was on ESPN+ at that time with no issue. When I tried to access the ESPN app today though I'd select the ESPN app from the channel menu, it would load, and 2-3 seconds later, regardless of if I pressed any buttons on the remote or not, it would crash back to the channel menu. The NBC Gold app works fine, I watched La Fleche Wallonne on it yesterday live and brought up a video on it today when ESPN was crashing.
As a data point, so far I'm having no problems with my Roku 2 (tried it last night with a USL game). In fact, I'm branmint bie binoche with it (to use a Walloon phrase, given your reference to La Flech Wallonne). My grandfather was fluent in Walloon.
Sorry! I forgot the Premier in my post. I plead "Old brain syndrome." The Premier is mostly equivalent to the Roku 3 and should work fine. I believe it should be connected wired for best results as with any other Roku (or any other device for that matter) that can be connected wired. I also left out the new Roku stick and it should work as well. If you are having problems with trying to authenticate your Roku I will repeat what I said in an earlier post: There are two ways to authenticate. The first is through the settings menu and the other is to start to play a ESPN+ video which takes you to the same page as the settings method. It has been reported that the settings method causes problems while the play method works well. One more thing: Any time you try to fix a problem on the Roku by removing the app and re-installing it you must reboot in between or the remove/re install will not make any difference,
Its not an authentication problem. The app itself crashes before any video is even selected. I also tried rebooting the Roku between removal and readding to no success.
I think your problem is most likely a poorly written app. Like you say, this mess was rolled out before it was ready. (And now it's all-night pizza and Pepsi time.) My problem is more with the video stream dropping out of live mode all the time. After doing some experimenting, it seems to work better on a smaller window than on full screen. That makes me think that the folks at ESPN underestimated the amount of bandwidth they were going to need for this project. (not to mention overestimating the skill level of their technical staff.)
The only other thing I can think of is wireless vs wired but I cannot think of any way that could cause an app crash. The other thing I can think of is that maybe the app was not tested on a Premier and there is something unique in the Premier. Almost all the reports I have seen about ESPN+ crashing in any way on Rokus have involved the Premier. That does not do you any good but it is a data point. Although it is being selfish I am glad it is you and not me that is having problems.
Lousy? I am not that sure. It is possible that their testing labs do not include a Premier. It would be perfectly reasonable for a lab, even a major one to have only three or four of a given platform and if they tested on a Roku stick, a Roku 2 and a Roku Ultra and encountered no problems they believed it would work on the Premier as well. There are so many different platforms that ESPN runs on that even a huge company cannot test on all of them. Not helping things is that Roku says that any app that runs on a Stick and an Ultra should run on all Rokus in the current lines. Roku is my favorite streamer BUT Roku is quite bad at not being forthcoming about any device that has device specific problems. They never even acknowledged the well documented reboot problems of the Roku 2xs. The Premier and the Roku 4 also have several well documented problems that Roku should have acknowledged but they have not, mot even to developers unless the developer presses them HARD. This is not the correct place to debate technical issues of streamers but I though I would point out that this problem may well not be directly with ESPN, as much as I would LOVE to bash ESPN. My suggestion, since there is really no way to really impact ESPN's programmers, is for anyone with the buggy Rokus is to get a different Roku. The Ultra and the new Stick both seem very stable. Before replacing any Roku you might want to try the nuclear option: A full hardware factory reset. Press and hold the reset button for at least 30 seconds. Ignore what happens on the screen. After 30 seconds release the button and your Roku will be back a its factory condition. You will then need to re-pair the remote, if you have an RF remote, and the reinstall any apps you have. Note: You may get lucky and have all your apps reinstall from Roku's servers. But you may not. Any app that requires authentication will need to be reauthenticated. You will also loose any special settings you have. If you do this I suggest you setup and test ESPN first. Just to give it the best chance of working. If it works it probably will keep working. Just to lend a bit to my credibility I have owned Rokus since the original N1000 (The Netflix player) was introduced (I have had at least one Roku from every Roku line introduced) and I have been active in testing for many apps for several developers and those developers have shared what Roku has told them and what problems they have run into in Roku's development process. Now back to my real joy - Watching soccer and Hockey on my Roku.
Just FYI I have the Premier+, I don't know if it has similar issues to the Premier. If it were just this Roku issue I'd likely agree with you. But there was a bug that made all iOS purchases unable to link to their ESPN accounts for the first 3 days. Not only that but as I worked my way up through their various support options from text message to chat to email to phone nobody knew about it until I got on the phone and the first thing they asked was "Were you on an iPad?" and when I said yes they said "There's a known issue, working on it, no ETA" etc. And yet that information was never posted anywhere, instead just telling people who were trying to link to "Go to Settings on the mobile device you signed-up on", literally the exact thing that wasn't working. Then you had my earlier Roku issue where the pairing screen wasn't working, until it suddenly did (that one I never did a reinstall or reboot, it just started working after a few hours). Maybe as an almost 20 year QA engineer these issues annoy me more than most, but its ridiculous that the linking of an account from an iOS device wasn't tested before release. Literally almost the first thing you're going to tell clients to do after signing up. Basic regression testing before release would have caught that.
I wouldn't be surprised if ESPN made some promises that the devs couldn't keep in terms of having functional software by a certain date.
Seems like there is a lot of college sports content that was also available via ESPN3 that is now ESPN+.
I've just installed the ESPN app on my friend's Roku and ESPN+ is working just fine. That's using the basic ESPN app.