Roku Developer Program

[greubel]

I have WMV files that play fine on the older Roku models. The Roku2 throws an error message saying that they are not supported ?
They also fail in the beta 4.1

[stratcat96]

that's because WMV9 file types have temporarily been disabled on the Roku 2 models

[greubel]

Are they going to be reinstated ?

[stratcat96]

they're working on a fix to reinstate support for MKV and WMV9 on the Roku 2 but there's no word of when unfortunately

[filip_navara]

The new firmware (4.1.2663) re-enables MKV support. It's still not visible in the official USB Player channel, but the unofficial ones (Roksbox and USB Browser) work. I didn't try WMV yet, but I can do it once I get home tonight.

Note that there still seem to be some problems with the MKV playback, but I want to narrow them down before I post about it.

Update: WMV (encoded using Microsoft VC-1) doesn't work even with version 4.1.2663.

[Anonymous]

I can report that WMV has been deprecated and is not supported in Roku2, with no current plans to do so. The fact of the matter is that virtually no one used it and anyone that was has moved or is moving to H.264.

Patrick

[greubel]

There are a lot of my users that have WMV files on their computers and play them often. I personally have thousand of links to web files that no longer play because of this narrow perspective.

[destruk]

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
I can report that WMV has been deprecated and is not supported in Roku2, with no current plans to do so. The fact of the matter is that virtually no one used it and anyone that was has moved or is moving to H.264.

Patrick

What benefit is there to reducing functionality? Would keeping WMV support have been detrimental to the operation of the Roku in some way or was the reason truly that you think nobody is using it so it got deleted from the codebase?

[filip_navara]

"destruk" wrote:
What benefit is there to reducing functionality? Would keeping WMV support have been detrimental to the operation of the Roku in some way or was the reason truly that you think nobody is using it so it got deleted from the codebase?

Roku 2 internally uses different hardware than Roku 1 and thus the hardware decoding couldn't be reused as is. The new Roku box is built on Broadcom chips with VideoCore technology. While Broadcom has implementation of many codecs (H.263, H.263+, H.264, VC-1, VP8) I believe they have to be licensed separately. The information is not publicly available. In any case the functionality would have to be re-implemented from scratch even if Roku had the necessary license.

[satnismymotor]

"filip.navara" wrote:
The new firmware (4.1.2663) re-enables MKV support. It's still not visible in the official USB Player channel, but the unofficial ones (Roksbox and USB Browser) work. I didn't try WMV yet, but I can do it once I get home tonight.

Note that there still seem to be some problems with the MKV playback, but I want to narrow them down before I post about it.

Update: WMV (encoded using Microsoft VC-1) doesn't work even with version 4.1.2663.

I m not able to play (properly encoded) mkv via the usb media browser (nowhereman) even after the firmware update. Hoping they update the official usb media channel asap