Solving playback issues

[atc98092]

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@rdunn3208 wrote:

Just ran into same issue.  Went through a chat session with customer service. He couldn't fix it. 

I found that you can fool the Roku media player into playing the file. Just change the file extention (not the file itself) to another format. I used .mkv That worked. 

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That will only work under limited circumstances. The codecs used within the container (and that's all the MKV is, a container) must be supported by Roku. The video has to be H.264/MP4, and with some devices MPEG-2, and the audio has to be AAC, PCM or AC3. Simply changing the extension of the file doesn't actually change anything else, and in most cases will simply make it unplayable with any player. 

[rdunn3208]

Gotcha. Thanks for that info.. I had three movies that I couldn't watch until I did that little extension change thing. I'll see if they play on my other (Samsung) TVs. If not, I'll change them back to avi. for future use. Maybe I'll leave two copies on my drive, one for TCL,  one for everything else. 

[lesmikesell]

There's a pretty good chance you could leave the drive connected to your computer, fire up a Plex, emby, or Jellyfin server, and play over the network on all your devices with the corresponding client apps - or sometimes a generic DLNA client.

[rdunn3208]

Whew! Lost me😜

[atc98092]

DLNA is a protocol to stream media across a home network to compatible devices, such as Roku, Blu Ray players and Smart TVs. There's also a couple of other servers that use proprietary streaming methods, such as Plex and Emby. They both have dedicated channels for Roku devices. For "regular" DLNA servers, you use the Roku Media Player to stream. Serviio is one DLNA server option to consider. I suggest it mostly because I wrote the profiles used for Roku devices, so I know how well they work. 

[lesmikesell]

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@rdunn3208 wrote:

Whew! Lost me😜

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DLNA is a standard to stream media over networks.  Basically you leave your media collection connected to a computer (that you needed to create it anyway...) and you can play it from any other device on your network.  Roku's media player app is one way to do it - it can play from network servers as well as USB.

But, the problem with DLNA is that the standard does not require devices to recognize or play any particular formats.  There are some workarounds for that where the client identifies itself and the server may try to transcode to a usable form.  Or not - it isn't really standardized.

Thus, there are other, more closely coupled, servers and clients where the server generally is able to recognize the client and deliver something it can handle.   Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin are versions of these.  You download the server to your computer and the client app on your streaming devices and everything just works.   Plex and Emby are commercial efforts where some parts are free and you can pay for additional things.  Jellyfin is completely free.   The Plex server and  computer and TV apps are free but you would have to pay something to use the phone or tablet app.  I think they can all server DLNA to other clients.

[atc98092]

"But, the problem with DLNA is that the standard does not require devices to recognize or play any particular formats."

That's not a problem. In fact, that's the strength of DLNA. It doesn't require supported media. You only need a DLNA server that is capable of transcoding. Yes, not all DLNA servers support transcoding. Windows has DLNA support built in, but its transcoding ability is limited, to be kind. And depending on the content being transcoded, it does require that whatever the server is running on has a bit of processing power. DLNA servers built into routers don't have enough power. Some NAS devices do, but almost any PC (Windows, Mac or Linux) can handle one or two streams at a time. As I said, it really depends on the transcoding profiles included with the server. Plex and Emby have really good ones. I know the ones in Serviio are good, if I say so myself. But there are certainly others out there as well. 

[lesmikesell]

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@atc98092 wrote:

"But, the problem with DLNA is that the standard does not require devices to recognize or play any particular formats."

That's not a problem. In fact, that's the strength of DLNA. It doesn't require supported media. You only need a DLNA server that is capable of transcoding. 

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And yet, I'll bet the reason you had to get involved with writing profiles was that it didn't work.  And it only fixed one combination of server and client out of the bazillion possibilities.

[atc98092]

No, Serviio had a Roku profile that worked just fine. However, it transcoded far more than was absolutely necessary, and also added a bitrate limitation that Roku players built after 2015 no longer needed. Since I owned several different Roku devices, and also had some programming experience, I offered to assist the Serviio developer. Actually, many of the profiles included in Serviio were created by users. Not because Serviio didn't work for them, but to simply make it better. 

Naturally, that only benefitted the owners of those devices, but still a worthwhile thing to do. I have found that Plex and Emby can transcode when not absolutely needed as well, since as you mention there are many different combinations of players and media. 

[Harry2020]

This is a joke btw. I totally agree that in 2022 not being able to play avi from a USB is laughable. I too wish I’d looked into this before buying 😠