I’ve seen a few people request FLV container support. If you’re one of those, I’d like to ask a couple of questions:
What FLV content do you want to play? Yours or someone else’s? If someone else’s, whose?
If it’s your FLV content, what’s preventing you from supporting other containers?
Which particular codecs do you need for FLV? Anything beyond h.264/AAC?
I guess they are talking about sites like YouTube.com, ABC.com, Hulu.com, Cwtv.com, Fancast.com, Crackle.com, and MTV.com etc.
That’s only my guess. I have no real interest in this question.
I would like to see FLV support on roku.
The videos that we stream are ours since we ingest our client’s videos and re-encoding them to flv at the moment. Nothing’s preventing us from switching to mp4 / wmv. We just want to unify the content over our various platforms. It would be nice to have flv. It would be nice to see ogg vorbis support as well.
Not to completely send this thread off into a tangent right away or anything, but if you are asking about file container support, I’d be most interested in VOB support. I’m not sure if that’s even possible with the current hardware, but thought I’d throw it out there anyway. If I’m way off base, just tell me to shut up. 
The recent local network streaming solutions being created with the SDK are very exciting, but the time required to rip and subsequently encode an entire DVD collection to the strict encoding requirements of the Roku DVP is a severe barrier to entry. If the Roku DVP could support VOB file playback directly, and not require the lengthy encoding process, it would certainly streamline things and truly open it up for local network streaming. BTW, I am not a developer – just a loyal Roku DVP user who really wants the local network streaming solution to work as best as possible.
Thanks, and sorry for the side-bar. 
I’m not a developer, but I agree with DeftOne and would add that additional support of existing containers is also needed – just overall better support of mp4, etc would be nice. It seems that with test of mp4/m4v podcasts, it can be hit and miss.
I’m not a developer either, but support for Divx/AVI files would also be much appreciated. I have a lot of AVI files, and it would be very helpful to have some AVI support on Roku. It would save us the trouble of converting them (a painfully slow process) for local streaming.
flv container support is already there. It’s not recommended, but it does work. I believe people are asking for legacy flash support (not H.264 in a flash container). The Roku chipset documentation (yes, I’ve read it) says it doesn’t support it. What some of the guys here don’t understand is codec support is in silicon.
The Popcorn Hour uses the Sigma Designs SMP8643 it can handle many more formats, but i think it’s slightly more expensive than the NXP.
That’s what I want to understand. We’ve got some level of FLV support in there, but not documented or officially supported, but for those that are asking for FLV, why and for what content?
Patrick
“RokuPatrick” wrote:
That’s what I want to understand. We’ve got some level of FLV support in there, but not documented or officially supported, but for those that are asking for FLV, why and for what content?Patrick
Patrick,
There’s alot of video out there in legacy flash format. I think most of the guys here are interested in using other peoples content that’s in flash, more like what boxee is allowing. Don’t want to get into boxee’s business model too deep, but I think they are going to have some issues when the content owners find out that people are building “channels” without permission that bypass their advertising revenue stream or put content on a TV.
Here’s something to think about…you already know this Patrick, but for the benefit of the forum…most movie and television rights owners are not very interested in moving to the internet, just to have someone move them over the internet back to the TV. They are already on the TV, and they make money off of cable and their affiliates. The loudest uninformed proponents of over-the-top seem to think that somehow the content needs to be free. It’s not and web advertising isn’t going to pay for it. Sorry to say, the broadcasters have a 70 year old giant network that’s working just fine for them right now. This is exactly why there is no Hulu on set-top boxes.
EVTV deals with a lot of content that isn’t ours per se as we gateway other peoples video, but we’ve never run into anyone that only had flash video. Some weird wvm or h.264 encode, but not flash. But if we did, they would have to re-encode, and that’s not something that is feasible most of the time.
It’s my opinion that putting a lot of effort into legacy flash support would be a waste of time.
Yes I think expanding to flash would be a good move.
I would think Hulu, Crackle, Fearnet ect could utilize the platform
“dsfilms” wrote:
Yes I think expanding to flash would be a good move.I would think Hulu, Crackle, Fearnet ect could utilize the platform
They can already utilize the platform. As far as we know they just haven’t decided to do so.
We have all of our content in Flash H264 Video right now to support our main flash based sites. I would love to see Roku support Flash Video if it could actually stream through rtmp from Flash Media Server. If you just mean being able to playback flash encoded video from a file server the way it plays regular H.264 files then that might still be useful so we don’t have to encode an additional file but still means we are setting up a parallel servers.
“jnicholas” wrote:
We have all of our content in Flash H264 Video right now to support our main flash based sites. I would love to see Roku support Flash Video if it could actually stream through rtmp from Flash Media Server. If you just mean being able to playback flash encoded video from a file server the way it plays regular H.264 files then that might still be useful so we don’t have to encode an additional file but still means we are setting up a parallel servers.
Same here, I was trying to pitch this idea to a company and all their videos are in the FLV Flash H264 format, to do this as it looks now we would have to convert ALL the videos to do this.
If we had a way to implement this with the FLV vids in place now they would go for it hands down other wise we would have to convert thousands of videos. 
Any word on if Roku plans on releasing any type of FLV container?
Here are my answers to the original question…
I’ve seen a few people request FLV container support. If you’re one of those, I’d like to ask a couple of questions:
What FLV content do you want to play? Yours or someone else’s? If someone else’s, whose?
It is someone else content. It is for http://www.realcatholictv.com
If it’s your FLV content, what’s preventing you from supporting other containers?
Not mine, but the issue is the client of mine is not hip about converting all their videos and have 2 of every type on their servers (storage issues and time to convert)
Which particular codecs do you need for FLV? Anything beyond h.264/AAC?
Not sure what codecs their FLV is in, I would have to research that.
“ljprevo” wrote:
Any word on if Roku plans on releasing any type of FLV container?Which particular codecs do you need for FLV? Anything beyond h.264/AAC?
Not sure what codecs their FLV is in, I would have to research that.
Search Google for “MediaInfo”. It’s a handy little (Free)program that can read almost any Video/Audio file and tell you exactly what it’s made with(Codec, Bitrate, Resolution, ect…) I use it all the time to figure out different videos I get. Works Quite Well.
All new to me but I am dissapointed that we can’t watch Hulu. I still have to take the laptop to the bedroom and hook up to the tv to watch it.
Even if the Roku DVP supported flash, the likelihood of there being an official Hulu channel would still be pretty slim in my opinion, based on Hulu’s history with other software/STB’s (i.e., Boxee). Roku would have to work out some sort of licensing agreement, which I’m assuming would be rather difficult.
can brightsign play flv
Well, count me the odd man out but I really don’t like Apple. iTunes broke a few of my games because they know best and changed a bunch of settings and it took me a couple weeks to repair them. I also think the quality level of their format 264/quicktime is really really bad. Having a 2 hour video take up a gigabyte at acceptable quality is a real bad idea with bandwidth caps and all. I wish ROKU would support divx or xvid - that way I can get decent quality at a lower bandwidth. I got rid of all my pirated stuff many many years ago, so as for what I’d be using it for - that would be home videos from a divx camera like this one - http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SC-X300-M … B000MANQJA
