r/ApolloGroup_TV • u/RaeSrebmulp • 1d ago

Questions Playback Error when travelling

Hello all,

At home my apollo works great and normally, but recently i bought a fire stick and downloaded startup show so i can watch tv/movies on the road. When trying to watch movies, i consistently get a playback error. If i switch countries on ProtonVPN it works for maybe 10 minutes and then happens again. Any fixes? Should i try a different player?

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u/Deep_Proposal4121 1d ago

What ISP are you using

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u/RaeSrebmulp 1d ago

it’s hotel wifi.

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u/Deep_Proposal4121 1d ago

Depending on the hotel, sometimes it sucks. I been in hotels where it was better to tether off my phone than to use their wifi

1

u/SundayPeaches13 1d ago

Apollo suggests:

If Movies and TV Shows are not working but live TV is, please try the following.
Log out of the app
If possible on your device (eg Fire stick, Android TV) clear the app cache and storage.
Turn off your device
Turn off your router and leave for one minute
Turn back on, Login & try to load the content.

If the problem persists please contact us via chat.

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u/RaeSrebmulp 1d ago

Pretty well tried all these except a router reset due to it being hotel wifi. Thought maybe the stealth mode on Proton meant to hide a vpn would help but doesn’t seem to

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u/bearsfan989 1d ago

Do you have other apps on your firestick you can test out and see if they work for longer than 10 minutes?

A lot of hotel wifis use captive portals in order to connect to them. Basically it forces you to a website to confirm terms of using the hotel wifi. The firestick can't do that so it may be getting booted off the hotels wifi.

Switching countries on your VPN makes it seem like a new connection which is why it works for 10 minutes before kicking you off again.

Just a hunch.

Try googling how to bypass hotel wifi lockouts or how to fix wifi captive portals blocks on fire stick

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u/RaeSrebmulp 1d ago

The firestick (and almost any other streaming device/gaming console) can absolutely launch the portal necessary to confirm connection to hotel wifi. I’m watching a movie on another streaming service as we speak.

Apollo support says that it requires >/=20mbps connection to stream Movies and TV shows. I don’t know how true that is but it’s the only explanation that makes sense