Roku Media Player Review

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Updated on: June 27, 2021
Time to read: 6 minutes
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In the digital era of streaming services, it’s become easier to choose the best media player to fit your needs. Of course, you have Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast as the leading names in the industry. But there’s a new streaming player ready to dethrone the 2. Roku media player has gained quite a reputation for itself in the last years, gathering uses from all over the world with its great features and easy to use interface.

Many media players offer excellent services. For example, if you want to try a media player for Mac, there is Elmedia Player. It has various compatibility modes with many file formats such as FLV, MOV, MP4, WMV, and many more. Roku streaming media player has some really significant advantages, so let’s explore it a little bit.

Table of Contents

What is Roku Media Player?

If you’re curious to know what is Roku media player, we’ve got you covered. First, let’s talk about Roku. It is a great media service that supports over 1800 streaming channels, including YouTube, Netflix, HBO Go, and many more. It also offers 4K videos, movies, and TV episodes, all in the form of channels.

Roku media player also offers playback of your personal videos, music, and photo files from your PC or mobile devices directly to your TV screen.

Of course, Roku has its own media player, which supports many types of file formats. Usually, Roku streaming media player is already pre-installed, but let’s dig a little more and see how it works precisely.

Roku streaming media player

How To Set up Roku Media Player?

First, you need a Roku account in order to get to enjoy the full benefits of Roku media player. After you’ve registered, you can go on and link your device to your new Roku account. To link your phone or computer to your TV, you just need to click on “Activate a device”. After this, enter the code displayed on your TV, confirm the “Agree and Continue” button, and that’s it. After that, you can go ahead and install Roku media player on your computer or mobile device. The second step is to “add channel” in order to install the default media player for Roku, and you can browse through your local media services for content.

Roku works excellent with multiple servers, such as The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), Ready DLNA, Plex, PlayOn, Serviio, Windows Media Player, and Twonky.

If confused, know that DLNA is the technology used to share content through a local network. Use DLNA server software and the same network connection to have access to your desired content.

How to Play Your Favorite Content on Roku Media Player

Now that we explained a little about the technicality behind Roku streaming media player, it’s time to talk about the steps to play different media files on it:

  1. On the Media Type window, pick the type you want to play.
  2. Select the devices where these files are stored (your laptop, or smartphone for example).
  3. Pick a supported file from your device. For example, WMA, ACC, FLAC, DRS, ALAC or JPEG, GIF, MP4, and the list goes on.
  4. After you selected your file, tap OK.
  5. The files will start playing now. You can pause it, stop it or rewind it, using the Forward, Reverse or Pause buttons.
  6. Tap on Back if you wish to stop playing the selected file.

Elmedia Player

If you want to try a different media player for your Roku, find out that it’s possible. For example, Elmedia Player is another excellent choice to play your favorite content. Elmedia player is a free media player, extremely versatile in its file format compatibility. It supports files from M4V, FLAC, MKV, MP3, AVI, DAT, MP3 to Blu-ray, and many others. Of course, Elmedia is full HD, with flawless and smooth playback. In case there’s any type of audio issue, Elmedia can solve them with great options to adjust the audio delay.

You can use Elmedia Player with Roku, Chromecast, Airplay, and DLNA. Your Smart TV will be able to play your favorite content with no pauses or sync issues.

Elmedia Player

What If I Fail To Play Different Formats Movie On Roku?

MKV video file format can be played through Roku media player only on Roku’s USB port. This can be quite an inconvenience, especially because you have to transport your files from your laptop to the USB. 

This leads to another worry regarding the format compatibility. To get this problem out the way, it’s better to install an MKV media player on your computer. This will ensure that you’ll be able to have an excellent experience enjoying your favorite content on the big screen from your PC no matter what.

FAQ

The main hardware difference between Roku media player and Roku stick is Roku USB’s quad-core processor. In addition, the devices have wireless of 802.11 (b/g/n). Sadly, if you want to play 4k videos, you’ll need Premiere or Ultra for this feature, as none of them supports 4K.

This depends on Roku’s ability to recognize the codec used within the MP4. If not, then Roku won’t be able to play the MP4 format. This is because Roku Media player only plays videos stored on the USB drive, formatted with different file systems, such as FAT16, FAT32, EXT2, EXT3, to name a few.

Roku media player has two types of serves: local network and USB port. Thus, it can support any type of media file from MP4 to WMV, or any other file format as others media serves like Windows Media Player or Plex.