Solving playback issues

[Scott30]

I have a Roku tv stick, and am trying to use the Roku media player to connect to my windows 10 computer as a DLNA server in order to play mp4 videos from my computer on my tv. The video plays, and everything looks ok, however, audio will not play for the majority of my mp4s - some of them DO work, however, most of them don't. All MP4s were encoded using AAC audio, which should be supported, however, no matter what I try, I cannot get this to work.

Has anyone else had any luck solving this problem? Is Roku working on an update to fix the media player?

[andyross]

Roku has more or less abandoned the Roku Media Player. They are more focused on Internet streaming. I don't know if maybe Plex might work.

[Scott30]

I was afraid of that. Plex isn't the way I want to go, I don't want to have my files going through their servers. At this point, I may as well find another dlna reciever - I know that Amazon fire sticks do the kob if I get the right app on them. I kight try that.

I wish Roku wiuld update their media player though.

[renojim]

@Scott30, AAC audio should work, but I believe only mono/stereo AAC is supported.  It's been a while, so I may be misremembering things.  I've said it before, if playing your own media is important to you, there's much better alternatives.  I sincerely doubt that Roku will ever add features to their media player that aren't required by the big players in the streaming game (i.e., Netflix).  You either adapt/re-encode your media to something that's supported, use on-the-fly transcoding, or look elsewhere for a streaming device.

[Scott30]

Yeah, I'm gonna look into Amazon's fire stick. I have over 800 files, most of which use 5.1 audio. I think what you mean by stereo would be 2.1. No way am I going to re-encode all of those.

Roku needs to get to work on this though, this is just stupid.

[andyross]

The poor audio support is probably why Tidal pulled their app from Roku.

If you want good audio support, you mainly need to pay for a quality device. Mainstream Roku and even Firesticks are somewhat basic. The Google Onn 4K streamer may be usable as it's basic GoogleTV and you can do most anything with it.

For true audiophile, look to Apple TV or Nvidia Shield.

[Scott30]

Personally, I despise all things Apple, so I'll look into the nvidia shield. I might also look at Google.