How to Set Streaming Quality on the Roku Digital Video Player

The Roku digital video player comes configured to use an automatic bit rate setting for streaming content. While the automatic setting works most of the time, it can still cause problems with playback of content from sites like Netflix and Amazon Video On Demand. If the streaming rate is set too low, it will result in poor quality video or audio. If it's set too high, you may experience repeated rebuffering and reloading of your video and audio streams. The menu to change these settings is not displayed in the Roku main menu. However, you can still access it to change your settings or to set your Roku HD player to display error messages when the streaming isn't working properly.

Access the Roku Bit Rate Override Settings Menu

To access the hidden Bit Rate Override Settings Menu, press the "Home" button 5 times, the rewind button 3 times and the fast forward button 2 times. A menu with a selection of bit rates will appear. Make sure you know what your broadband Internet speed is before you continue. To do this, you can use an online Internet speed test to determine your actual download speed. You can also do a speed test on your Roku player using the free Speed Test private channel. To run the speed test, simply load the Speed Test channel from the menu. The app will automatically find a local server near you. The test provides useful data such as your latency, and download speeds in kilobytes per second and kilobits per second.

When you have an average speed for your Internet connection, choose a speed from the menu that is slightly slower than that speed. For example, if your broadband download speed is 2.0 megabits per second (Mbps,) set the bit rate for 1.5 or 1.2 Mbps.

Enable Playback Debugging

If your Roku digital video player continually rebuffers or reloads the streaming video content, you can enable playback debugging to diagnose the problem. When playback debugging is enabled, the Roku player will display your actual available bandwidth, the speed of the Roku streaming content and any errors loading the content. You can use this information to tell if your Internet connection is consistently too slow to stream video content. The playback debugging does not work on audio only streams like online radio. You can disable the playback debugging by re-accessing the Bit Rate Override Menu using the same combination of buttons stated above.

For more information, read Best Private Channels for the Roku Digital Video Player and How to Solve Problems with a Roku Digital Video Player.