Thu Jul 15, 2021 10:05 pm by atc98092
Many of the less expensive external players (Fire TV, Roku, etc.) still have limitations on what codecs they support. The Shield plays about everything, but Roku and Fire TV have a more limited selection of supported codecs. However, on the Fire TV you can install VLC player, which on its own supports the majority of media. I don't know specifically how it works on a Fire TV, as I've never had one. For my Roku players, I have to transcode lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD, DTS Master Audio) as it doesn't bitstream them. I think the Fire would be the same. The Roku also only supports a few containers, so if the contents are supported Serviio can just transmux the files into a supported container. I am the author of the Roku profiles that come with Serviio, so I know how they work pretty well. I think they would work about the same for a Fire TV player. The Shield plays everything without Serviio needing to do anything but stream.
Yes, I think a Roku or Fire TV would be far preferable to the Samsung player the TV has. You'll see metadata, and with much of the content you will be able to FF, rewind and resume.
Dan
LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
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