Streaming

No. This is a DirecTV Stream feature to avoid using excessive data. It probably also helps DirecTV reduce their data traffic under the assumption that nobody is actually watching. Perhaps you can train the dogs to hit the remote control every so often :)

As an alternative, your DirecTV Stream subscription allows you to log into the third-party (network) apps for the networks in your package, and some of those provide feeds of the network's live stream.  For example, you can get a live feed from the Discovery Go or Animal Planet Go apps, and there are undoubtedly others.  So install one of those apps on your Roku, follow the directions to link a provider (DirecTV) and log in, then you can select "Live" to get the stream.  Roku has also added a "shut off after 4 hours of no activity" feature, but you can disable it by going to Settings>Network>Bandwidth Saver and turning it off.

I did shut it off on the roku 

Turning it off won’t affect the DirecTV Stream timer, but should let the network apps run continuously (assuming they don’t also have time-out timers, which I don’t know but am guessing not).  Give one of them a try and see if it meets your needs 

when i try to link to discovery go .... direct tv is an option for my provider but DirecTV stream is not ..and every time i put in my user name and password i get rejected 

Discoverygo will not let me link...have directv stream 

@marketswinner 

You have an accepted solution in your post. No need for duplicate commentsz