Users Struggle As Spectrum-Roku Standoff Hits 8-Month Point With No End In Sight
As the Spectrum-Roku standoff reaches its 8-month mark, users are now struggling with tech issues that will be difficult to solve without intervention from one of the two parties.
According to various user and outlet reports, Roku’s Spectrum app has been giving error messages saying, “Spectrum TV is only available in the U.S. and its territories, ref code RLC-1002.”
When attempting to fix the issue with the tried-and-true method of deleting and reinstalling it, users quickly discovered that they could not reinstall the app, as Roku removed the app from its online marketplace following its kerfuffle with Spectrum, despite Roku telling its existing Spectrum customers they'd be fine back in December 2020.
The two companies have been at odds since December over carriage rights issues that seem to have no end in sight.
“Despite our best efforts to reach an agreement, Roku has not accepted Spectrum’s offer to continue our contract, which allowed customers to access the Spectrum TV app from Roku devices,” Spectrum said in a statement. “This change may prevent new downloads of the Spectrum TV app to your Roku device, but you can still access your full video library by downloading the Spectrum TV app to your Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, Xbox, smartphone, or tablet.”
Roku is also at odds with YouTube TV, and that situation seems to be going much worse than the Spectrum tiff — especially with the war of words being conducted by Roku’s leadership. In May, Roku’s CFO Steven Louden accused Google of “orchestrated efforts to strong-arm them into making their devices more expensive and therefore less competitive when compared to Google’s own products.”
At least Roku is not aiming that sort of venom at Spectrum, which can be seen as a positive. Hopefully, we’ll see a peaceful resolution to both issues, but it doesn’t look like that’s coming anytime soon. In the meantime, as Spectrum mentioned in the above statement, you can download the Spectrum TV app on your Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, Xbox devices, smartphones, or tablets.